maisoncupcake.com

New Digs

mctestadmin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:42:00 +0000

Welcome to Maison Cupcake’s new home over at WordPress. We’ve exchanged contracts, completed and the removal men have gone home. The new site has been up a couple of days but I was away on a jolly to Dublin at the weekend and it’s only now I have chance to unpack the last few boxes and rearrange stuff the way I like it.

It might take a while to settle in and fiddle with plug-ins and double check RSS feeds are working etc. Ted is now back at pre-school so things should be getting back to normal round here.

So what’s new?

Recipe posts from now on will include shaded area to make the recipe text stand out more clearly
Attractive recipe sheets in PDF so you can print just the bit you need in the kitchen
Proper tags and categorisation so it’s easy to find stuff
Web optimised images sized to fit the template properly so it looks nice and doesn’t take ages to load pages
Inclusion in the detailed A-Z recipe index (under construction).
and a few more tricks too once I’ve learned them – can someone please write “Plug-ins for Dummies”?

A lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to tag and categorise posts that have been imported from the old site at Blogger i.e. those before August 2010.

You may notice with posts created on Blogger, irregularities with internal links, sizing of pictures and line spacing. I had hoped to re-edit all the old posts before going live with the new site but have since decided that that way madness lies therefore we will start afresh with beautiful layouts on the new posts and I’ll probably just edit the old ones a few at a time starting with the most popular. I have a few draft posts from Blogger which may still get published on the new site which have the old size photos. I am still editing the broken internal links. Those ones in posts published since April 2010 should be ok but if you spot any in posts more recent than this please let me know.

If you come across something that looks really peculiar, please email me at sarah AT maisoncupcake DOT com to let me know!

Thanks!

Sarah

PS: The picture above looks rather like my parents’ living room circa 1975. It is a display from London’s Geffrye Museum although my father still lives with one of these old green telephones (original, not retro refit) and a frighteningly similar rug.

Moving right along…

mctestadmin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:13:00 +0000

Holidays are over and so is my August blog break. Although I’ve returned to Twitter sooner, I must admit to sitting on my hands to not post things in the past few weeks as my attention has been focused on entertaining Ted during the pre-school holidays, potty training and finishing the new WordPress site.

Before I tell you about that, here are a couple of pics of our summer (minus shots of potty sitting I hasten to add).

We had a trip to Brittany and visited Mont St Michel on probably the busiest day of the year. Not an experience to repeat!!

We’ve been to see Toy Story 3, visited lots of cafes and had a day trip to London Zoo.

Ted had a day out with his daddy on the river meaning that I got a valuable day all to myself, my only time alone in the house during six weeks of no pre-school. Here is Ted in front of Big Ben just before they boarded the boat.

So that day, and for many matchstick propping evenings, I have been hard at work on the new WordPress site.

I’m delighted to report that we’re ready to take flight and land on the new site. Just as soon as a few last minute details that are too geeky even for me, have been ironed out. All being well, we’ll be live any day.

In the meantime, I have a little boy’s haircut to organise, little feet to be measured, a shiny new lunchbox to buy and yes, more potty training before pre-school starts again next week.

I am hoping that this will be the last post on Blogger, fingers crossed the next one will be at WordPress (without a month’s gap) and you will receive your RSS feed same as usual. Make sure you click through and say hello when it happens!

Nutty Apple Loaf with Caramel Drops: for English Mum’s Bake Off and a MASTERCHEF COOKBOOK GIVEAWAY

mctestadmin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:25:00 +0000

Aha! You thought I’d gone away for the summer but I have one last trick up my sleeve before taking my self imposed August blog break. I realised I still hadn’t entered English Mum’s Big Bake Off and that this nutty apple loaf was just the ticket.

This is the cake that I made for the foodbloggers’ Masterchef event at the Miele showroom earlier this month. I brazenly lied to Mr Egg and Mr Toad that the cake only required 30 minutes in the oven, I knew full well it needed a good 45 but since I didn’t watch the show I didn’t realise contestants normally only get 60 minutes and had only skim read my email with the timings absorbing just the bare facts “you’ll be cooking between 2 and 4pm” blah blah blah.

It was with mild panic therefore that I realised 90 minutes before leaving the house that a) my apples in the fruit bowl had gone a funny colour and b) we had 60 minutes not 2 hours to make two items. My other item if you’ve not seen the previous post was Hazelnut French Macarons which were a foolhardy enough thing on their own.

Still, all that’s history now and it worked out fine. I’m not sure if Egg and Toad were just being polite or sarcastic when they said that the good thing about cake mix was that it tasted good even if it wasn’t cooked. They should know – cheeky so and so’s kept dipping spoons in my bowl throughout!

Anyway, just to prove that this cake recipe does work, here is the cooked version for your delectation.

I am supposedly signing off now during August for a technical break to finish my new WordPress site although I will be bribing all you folks to remember me by running a couple of giveaways in the meantime.

Starting today with….

GIVEAWAY: THE MASTERCHEF COOKBOOK – SIGNED COPY

I am giving away my copy of The Masterchef Cook Book, signed by Greg Wallace and John Torode. This giveaway is open to all readers with a UK mailing address. International readers are also welcome to comment however they will receive an alternative lightweight mystery prize if they win the giveaway. The first UK reader drawn will receive the Masterchef book. The winner will be chosen using an online randomiser and announced in a subsequent post on this blog.

To enter:

1. MANDATORY: Leave a comment on the bottom of this post no later than midnight BST on Sunday August 8th 2010. Note for entrants commenting without website addresses: You will also need to leave your name/town in the comment and then email me separately at sarah AT maisoncupcake DOT com to tell me your own email address and confirming your name/town so I know which commenter you were. Unless I can match up comments with valid contact details, a new winner will be chosen.

2. SECOND CHANCE TO WIN:

Visit and “Like” my new Facebook page also by midnight BST on Sunday August 8th 2010. Everyone who already “likes” the new Maison Cupcake Facebook page will also be entered into this giveaway. You must have your Facebook account settings such that people viewing your profile are able to send you messages otherwise how can I contact you if you win?

LASTLY…

This doesn’t influence your likelihood of winning the Masterchef book but I can promise that my readers would be showered with glorious giveaway prizes on a regular basis if I were to become a finalist for the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards. Never mind winning, I’d be delighted to even be shortlisted. Please click this link and nominate me in the Lifestyle category, telling them what you like about Maison Cupcake. If you really love me you can ask all your friends on Facebook/Twitter/down the pub to nominate me aswell (you can bribe them with an entry to the Masterchef Cookbook giveaway if nothing else).

Nutty Apple Loaf going into gorgeous all singing all dancing oven

Nutty Apple Loaf with Caramel Drops

Adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf

I have made a few changes to the Hummingbird version of this recipe; by using wholemeal flour instead of plain, using all walnuts instead of mixed nuts and by using double the amount of chocolate (why ever not?). I’ve also omitted a stage where you are supposed to leave batter hanging around overnight as it seems pointless to me and I cannot imagine the cake would take any better if you did.

Finally, I made the version in the photographs using the caramel drops from Hotel Chocolat that I’d won in a giveaway on Mowielicious. They tasted awesome with the apple but if you cannot get hold of these you can use normal baking chocolate chips.

Ingredients

175g softened unsalted butter

140g soft light brown sugar

2 tablespoons strawberry jam

2 eggs

140g wholemeal flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

100g roughly chopped walnuts

100g Hotel Chocolat caramel drops or chocolate chips

2 eating apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped into smallish pieces (smaller than butter beans but bigger than kidney beans).

You will need a 23 x 13 loaf tin, greased and lined with baking parchment

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170c / Gas Mark 3. Using an electric mixer (freestanding or handheld), beat the butter, sugar and jam until pale and fluffy.

2. Add the eggs one at a time making sure that all the batter around the edge of the bowl is getting incorporated.

3. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon then beat in the butter and sugar mixture. Stir the nuts, caramel drops and chopped apple into the batter by hand until mixed in.

4. Pour into the prepared tin and smooth the surface with a palette knife. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until brown and the sponge feels firm. A skewer should come out clean although there will be some molten chocolate.

5. Allow to cool in the tin for a while before turning out onto a wire cooling rack. This is a moist cake and keeps beautifully in a tin for 4-5 days.

Giveaway Winners: Flahavan’s goodies

mctestadmin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:50:00 +0000

The ten winners of the Flahavan’s goodie bags given away in this post were:

Sunita Bhuyan, Ipswich

Jax Blunt, Felixstowe

Su-yin Koay, London

Nuala O’Niell, Belfast

Julie Johnson, Birmingham

Denise Walker, Birmingham

Beverley Kerry, Derbyshire

Simone Price, Leeds

Pippa Wright, Milton Keynes

Sian Reynolds, Milton Keynes

With thanks to Flahavan’s

21 Great Tips from Alastair Hendy, Professional Food Photographer and Stylist

mctestadmin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:01:00 +0000

Hot on the heels of my sponsorship by Irish porridge oat brand Flahavan’s to attend Cybermummy, I received an exciting invitation with an Irish flavour. It was to attend a food photography and styling workshop hosted by Bord Bia, the Irish food board, led by professional food photographer and stylist Alastair Hendy and taking place at the Irish embassy.

I seem to be doing rather well at getting out of Walthamstow these days but even by recent standards, this workshop was a lot of fun and I was delighted to see lots of familar faces from Food Blogger Connect; Anne, Bron, Jeanne, Pascale, Michele and Matina. I was also delighted to finally meet the Irish food blogger in London, Niamh from Eat Like a Girl.

Hadji Bey’s Irish Turkish Delight – originally made by an Armenian immigrant!

After a talk by Alastair we were set loose on several tables of Irish produce and some of Alastair’s magnificent prop collection to put into practice what we’d heard. Despite the quality of material to play with I’m not massively delighted with my pictures as the light was awkward (very bright low direct evening sun) and I didn’t have a tripod with me.

Tripods and toddlers are not easily transported together – I had dropped Ted off with my husband on the way so the tripod had sadly been left at home. I took my mini gorilla tripod but didn’t find it very helpful. A delay on the tube also meant I arrived breathless in the nick of time and was too disorganised to take pictures of the wonderful black pudding, smoked salmon and pastry canapes we were treated too nor the wonderful displays of Irish food (which we promptly dismantled to photograph and then take home).

Therefore, these pictures are much grainier and tell a less complete story than I would like so please ignore that today if you can. Meanwhile I will share my favourite shots from the evening and the many tips I picked up from Alastair. A lot of these points were made with magazine photography in mind but they can still be interpreted for blogging.

Irish jelly beans. This is horribly grainy and I’m not sure you’d need a napkin to eat jelly beans but still…

21 Food Photography and Styling Tips from Alastair Hendy

1. Pictures of some foods sell more magazines than others. Chocolate is the most obvious one but strawberries, ice cream and figs are also very popular on the news stands.

2. Use a series of images to create a “story”. Mix close ups and long distance shots. Use a palette of common colours to link pictures together.

3. The three winning elements for great food photography are the look, the light and the lens.

4. Adding a “human element” can lift food that is difficult to photograph – have someone holding something or taking a bite.

Can a girl ever photograph too many flapjacks?!

5. When photographing ice cream, freeze the plate or dish to give yourself more time to shoot before it melts.

6. Make sure the food is the hero of the shot. Do not over style.

7. Use coloured paper as a background.

8. A picture of an empty bowl or plate can still tell a story. A “dirty” bowl of soup would still be styled so it looks like a “nice” used bowl!

9. Tie a napkin around a small pie to convey warmth!

10. If using hot drinks in glass cups, a plate rested on the top will create some condensation on the surface so the viewer knows the liquid is warm.

11. Leave space in magazine shots for copy.

12. Angled shots have more movement – an angled shot of a crowd will instantly look more like they are walking in a hurry.

Vintage metal tin, crying out to be photographed.

13. Use a blow torch to revive molten chocolate or butter which have solidified.

14. Toss salads in water to stop oil and vinegar dressings from breaking them down too quickly.

15. Keep herbs in bowls of cold water so they are fresh.

16. Does your soup ration look stingy? A small raw potato submerged in your broth will make the bowl look fuller and won’t soak up any liquid.

A scrunched up layer of baking parchment gives the effect of the tin looking fuller than it is.

17. When photographing in markets, don’t rush to take pictures. Stand around for a while and become part of the scenery. People around you will relax and forget you are there.

18. When disillusioned with scruffy backdrops in markets, remember you will be able to crop out tatty tarpaulin and unattractive pallets of rotting vegetables.

19. Photographing window displays, angle yourself so you don’t get yourself in the shot.

20. Angle cutlery so to avoid excess glare or reflections of yourself. (A further tip from me – wearing black will reduce the likelihood of your outfit being reflected in spoons!)

And last but not least…

21. Never, ever use a flash when photographing food!

Do you have a favourite food photography or food styling tip to share?

Things that don’t come naturally to me: low fat baking and hot drinks

mctestadmin — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:03:00 +0000

One more post after today then Maison Cupcake officially breaks up for summer. There are a couple of reasons for this, a) Ted is off pre-school so I have less free time on the computer, b) I want to finish my new WordPress site without the pressure to post new material at the same time.

I dare say I’ll end up posting brief things during August and I will still be my usual chatty self on Twitter and the new Maison Cupcake Facebook page (which you should “like” by the way if you haven’t already… I promise it won’t be a mere repetition of the material on here).

On the whole though I will be enjoying the pause to reflect on how to make sure the WordPress site is as good as it can be. A few changes are afoot.

Today I can share a couple of things, these peculiar looking fairy cakes are my rather odd contribution to Matcha Madness over at The Catty Life, and some pictures from a tea and chocolate tasting event I attended a couple of weeks ago. (Matcha = Green Tea, you see my logic here). I won’t win but then I’ve probably exhausted my winning dust with the holiday won at Cybermummy.

Said fairy cakes look so odd because they were my first attempt at gluten free, egg free baking. I’m not going to include the recipe here as I think it needs tweaking – consider this an appeal for help, where the hell did I go wrong?!

Take one standard fairy cake batter mix, substitute the flour with gluten free flour and the eggs with vegan egg replacer, replace butter with vegetable fat and this is what you get.

I added matcha and some Galaxy Counters to half of the batter, the rest was either studded with chopped apricots or whole cherries.

They don’t rise (no gluten I guess), they look a bit funny but actually were quite compelling to eat, dense and comforting, almost like fudge but not sweet. A case of, they taste better than they look. But that’s not a lot of help to a food blogger.

But why you cry?

Well erm… I have a genetic predisposition to sky high cholesterol levels that I’ve been in denial about. Certainly the low fat angle is one I’m going to have to take seriously in my own diet from now on even if I still blog about lots of stuff that I can’t eat myself. How long I can motivate myself to do that remains to be seen…

The gluten free experiment is inspired by my mother who recently cut wheat from her diet and looks fantastic. I may not manage to eliminate wheat completely but I can embrace my inner Gillian McKeith and seek out alternatives wherever practical.

So I need to look deeper into this gluten free, egg free lark, but certainly I promise not to darken my shiny new WordPress blog with any of it unless I get better looking results.

Onwards then to the Green and Black’s tea and chocolate tasting event which I recently attended at Tapped and Packed in the West End, before I promised my doctor I’d eat nothing but porridge and steamed fish for three months.

Truth be told, for me at least, an evening of tasting chocolate alongside varieties of tea and coffee was highly challenging, not least because of the heat that evening. It was flipping hot that night and I was gasping for a cold drink. I had a long wait!

After a couple of talks about tea and coffee production we were given five types of Green and Black’s chocolate to taste alongside five types of tea and then repeated the chocolate tasting alongside five types of coffee.

I don’t touch coffee. I could possibly pinch my nose and swallow black or green tea (no milk please, milky tea is the drink of the devil so far as I’m concerned), the only brown stuff you’ll find me drinking is fizzy and comes in a silver can with red lettering on it. But not at the moment.*

* My diet coke addiction is a serious matter although it’s generally met with hilarity when I try to explain it to people. I am currently ON the diet coke wagon as of three weeks ago but this has been an on off situation for around ten years. My longest period not drinking diet coke was 18 months. I do not take my current status as a non diet coke drinker for granted, were there support groups for people battling with diet coke addiction, I would be attending them, it’s that bad.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m out of my depth doing any kind of in depth taste analysis. My verdict on wine is generally restricted to “if it’s pink or fizzy I like it” and for chocolate the equivalent is “I prefer the milk one”.

We didn’t get to taste my favourite Green and Black’s chocolate, their creamy milk variety in the pale blue wrapper. I’m fully aware that this preference may be sacrilege to seasoned chocolate connoisseurs but well, I know what I like!

We tasted one yummy (and increasingly squidgy as the evening went on) milk chocolate containing caramel and then four dark ones. Personally I’m not wild about dark Green and Blacks unless it’s Maya Gold but there wasn’t any of this tonight either. The only tea I said I liked was the one everyone else said didn’t taste of anything.

The good news though is that Green and Black’s peanut flavour which is apparently incredibly popular in the states, is coming to the UK later this year. Well it’s good news to people who can eat chocolate and peanuts at least…

I was a good sport and tasted the cappuccino but instantly wished I hadn’t. Bleugh. I passed on the remaining four coffees.

Due to my newly faced up to health situation, I will not be eating my bag full of Green and Black’s chocolate. I will though be giving it all away to a lucky reader/friend/relative in the near future but you’ll no doubt agree this should wait until the temperatures dip some more. Melted chocolate through the post is not a good thing.

A very cliched food blogging picture of a cappuccino… it might love me but the feeling is not reciprocated!

Postcard from… Brittany Ferries’ Portsmouth to Saint Malo night crossing

mctestadmin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:00:00 +0000

“Postcard from” is my occasional series of weekend non-recipe posts. This postcard comes from my recent experience travelling on the overnight ferry to France.

For peak holiday times, you have to book very early to get a cabin on the overnight crossing from Portsmouth to St Malo. It’s not cheap but when you consider how pricey a Dover Calais crossing can be during school holidays (£90 each way sometimes) and bear in mind the extra petrol costs, motorway tolls and an extra night staying in a hotel to break up your journey, actually the £200 extra you are likely to pay for the longer crossing becomes more tempting.

We’ve previously travelled on the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg. Big mistake. Driving down the Cherbourg peninsula is like going from Dover to Birmingham without motorways. It’s a long, dull drive. Plus you’ve only had four hours sleep on a six hour crossing (they wake you up at 5am British time, an hour before you get into port at 7am French time).

However the Portsmouth to St Malo crossing is around ten hours and arrives in port at 8am French time so you get more sleep and do less driving. It’s a win win situation, especially if you have a toddler who doesn’t like sitting in the back of a car for more than two hours at a time (less if hungry).

So with much excitement we boarded Brittany Ferries’ Bretagne en route to L’Ile de Re which would be four hours further drive from St Malo the next morning.

There are a few sights to see on the way out of Portsmouth…. HMS Victory got my dad rather excited.

The Spinnaker Tower and harbour side bars

I dislike planes and avoid flying. Truth is though, I’m not wild about ferries either. I guess I like my feet on the ground. Walking along decks like the one shown above and I have scenes from Titanic with Kate Winslet debating numbers of lifeboats running through my head.

“We don’t need a window” I told my husband.

“But Teddy could have looked out of it at the sea.”

“It’s cheaper to not have a window and we will be asleep when we’re in the cabin anyway.”

I hadn’t bargained for this. Rooms without views are not confined to the inner corridor of the upper decks where we’d stayed last time. They put you down there. As in, under the cars down in the hull of the boat. I didn’t even know that was possible. All cabins were sold out so we were down in third class.

The food lifted my spirits, I had one of these salads.

The desserts looked very tempting too.

My husband had fish and chips which admittedly looks like the meal from the Secret Nuclear Bunker post.

The photo of the chocolate-mousse-to-die-for is rubbish. Imagine though if you will, that scene in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta tells Samuel L Jackson that “it’s the little things” that make Europe special i.e. the glass of cold beer in the cinema, mayonnaise on the fries etc. Well the little thing that I thought made these chocolate mousses special was that they were served in china ramekins. A totally unnecessary touch since they were in plastic pots as well but it’s these details that make eating on a French ferry company more special than the service station service you get from the British equivalents.

Off to bed.

“It’s rather nice” said my father, impressed it had a telly.

“It’s like a mausoleum, ” I replied.

The bathroom was predictably tiny but serviceable. It reminded me of the scene on the train in Sex and the City where Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall are travelling with Amtrak to LA and have a toilet situated underneath their shower.

So down in the bowels of the ship how did I sleep? Not very well. How much this was to do with feeling like I was in K19: The Widowmaker and how much to do with fretting that Ted would roll out of bed I’m not sure. It was extremely dark in there as well and there were loud noises. I was mentally calculating how far away we were from water and visualising the murkiness out there.

I wanted to go and pace the decks upstairs in my slippers, even if it meant dashing down a corridor that looked like another scene from Titanic, the one where Leonardo has been chained with handcuffs to a pipe and Kate dashes off to get help. But I couldn’t as my husband and father were on the top bunks and there was only I to stop Ted rolling out.

Which he did, with a loud thud, head first at 4.30am. None of us went back to sleep after that.

We will be travelling with Brittany Ferries again this summer, but not overnight. If I were travelling Portsmouth to St Malo again, I would make certain I had a room with a view as that was I could be sure it was above the waterline.

Three Appetisers using Chutney: Chorizo Bites with Mozzarella and Rocket, Beef and Cranberry Wraps and Roast Tomatoes

mctestadmin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:20:00 +0000

Today sees the final part of my trilogy of suggestions for chutneys and beetroot picked up from the Baxter’s afternoon tea. Out of the dozen recipes they gave me, I ended up making six of the savoury ones at home to reproduce what I’d seen that afternoon. I didn’t walk away intending to make so many or base three blog posts on these products but the ideas were so easy to replicate at home that I thought they were all worthy of being added to my archive of party food.

Here are three different serving suggestions for simple appetisers all using chutneys; you could use any tomato based or onion based chutneys but the ones used here were Baxter’s Tomato Chutney with Red Pepper and Baxter’s Cranberry and Red Onion Chutney. The latter was from their premium range and was my favourite.

Roast Tomatoes with Chutney Filling
As with the beetroot bocquerones earlier this week, this is barely a recipe. Slice “lids” into cherry tomatoes so that you leave a “hinge”. Leave the stalks on as they look pretty. Scoop out some of the filling with a small spoon and replace with a half teaspoon or so of tomato chutney or relish. Sprinkle with some coarse salt and roast on a tray lined with baking parchment for 10 minutes at 160c / Gas Mark 2. Take care not to over do them as they will fall apart, you just want to warm them up and soften them. Truth be told, I did mine a little too long meaning that they could no longer be eaten with fingers but they still tasted good.

Tortillas usually fall apart when I make them but pleasingly these beef wraps served in thick rings seem to stay intact. They travel well and I have given them to my husband to take to work. These wraps have started something of a wrap obsession in my house, they were so tasty I made them three times in a fortnight so they are worth sharing.

If you cannot find the Baxter’s chutney then any sweet chutney or onion marmalade would do. I thought the wraps cut into rings would look attractive in a party buffet.

Roast Beef Wraps with Basil and Red Onion Chutney

Makes 4 wraps

Ingredients

4tbsp cream cheese

4 tortilla wraps

1/2 small pack of rocket salad

Basil leaves

4 warm roast beef slices

8tbsp onion marmalade or chutney

Method

1. Spread 1tbsp of the cream cheese down the centre of each tortilla wrap. Top with a handful of the rocket salad along with a few basil leaves.

2. Place a slice of the warm roast beef in the middle of each wrap. Then top each slice of beef with 2tbsp of the chutney.

3. Roll up the tortilla and slice into thick diagonal discs to serve.

Finally, these chorizo appetisers have been adapted from the Baxter’s suggestion. I couldn’t find the prescribed mini oat cakes so instead used some Nairn’s Oat Bakes which are a kind of low fat crisp. Since they are more fragile than oat cakes, two were sandwiched together with a dab of cream cheese to give them more substance. Getting the layers in the right order here is key to them being easy to pick up and pop in with one bite.

Chorizo Appetiser with Mozzarella and Tomato Chutney with Red Pepper

Adapted from Tom Kitchin’s Crostini with Mozzarella and Tomato Chutney with Red Pepper

Makes approx 24

Ingredients

2 bags of Nairn’s Oat Bakes or 2 dozen mini oatcakes

A little cream cheese (you can omit this if using proper mini oatcakes)

150g pack buffalo mozzarella (you won’t need all of it)

100g pack chorizo sausage (ditto)

1/4 jar Baxter’s tomato chutney with red pepper or similar

A handful of rocket leaves

Method

1. Dab some cream cheese between pairs of the Oatcake bites if using.

2. Top each little sandwich (or biscuit) with a slim disc of buffalo mozzarella. Add 1tsp of the chutney and a slither of rocket to the top of each one, then top with a disc of chorizo.

With thanks to Baxter’s for supplying samples of chutney and beetroot.

Top 10 Treats from Waitrose this Christmas

mctestadmin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 06:55:00 +0000

With thanks to Waitrose for inviting me to their Christmas launch last week. And the popcorn.

Any disappointment I might have had last week about not being asked to attend the opening of Bompass and Parr’s The Complete History of Food evaporated when I received an invite to the Waitrose 2010 Christmas press launch.

It might not have the same theatre of said event but I found hanging out in a beautifully restored five floor Georgian house in Fitzrovia, a few steps from Virginia Woolf’s former residence, far more satisfying.

All items from the Waitrose Christmas range were on display and many were available to taste. The main ranges being highlighted were Heston from Waitrose featuring dishes developed in collaboration with Heston Blumenthal, the Seriously range and Duchy Originals organic range.

My Top 10 Treats from Waitrose this Christmas

Getting your head around what to eat at Christmas was surprisingly easy when it all looked this good. Below are my favourite five savoury and favourite five sweet items. You won’t find turkey or mince pies in this top 10, these items were those which I thought were most exciting.

If you are hungry for more then do check out the huge photo album on my new Facebook page. (Make sure you “like” me whilst you’re at it for no-one does yet. *sniff*

1. Fish and Chip Cones

These brought back happy memories of the Fish and Chip appetisers at Food Blogger Connect!

2. Ham Hock Scones with Mustard

Predicted to be a best seller.

3. Mini Shellfish Selection (from Waitrose Entertaining only)

4. Heston from Waitrose Lapsang Souchong Tea Smoked Salmon

with Vanilla Mayonnaise

This vanilla mayonnaise was fantastic! Incase you are wondering, I made this recent cake before I saw this.

5. Rouzaire Brie with Grand Marnier.

Can you see a faint horizontal line through the middle of this brie? They slice it through the middle like a cake, drizzle with Grand Marnier and then sandwich it back together to let the rind build up again outside.

6. Christmas Tree chocolate cake – a bargain at £5.99, it was huge.

7. Box of Chocolate Dessert Pots

These were still in development but the idea is that you will be able to give a box of little desserts as a gift rather than a box of chocolates. I can see food bloggers the breadth of the country swooping in and buying these for the little glass dishes alone!

8. Heston from Waitrose Hidden Orange Christmas Pudding

A whole candied orange inside.

9. Fruit and Nut Cheesecake

I really loved the jewelled appearance of the fruit on top of this cheesecake.

10. Nutty Chocolate Kugelhopf

My personal favourite, the Christmas kugelhopf. I thought this dessert had real “wow” factor. Apparently it looks even better if you microwave it for 20 seconds to make the chocolate sauce glisten.

I hope that’s whetted your appetites for later in the year and you can now get back to eating choc ices and applying sun cream in this unusually good summer we have been enjoying. It won’t be long until Christmas ranges appear in shops, usually the second that summer sales are over. Selfridges are opening their Christmas department the first week in August.

New Maison Cupcake Facebook page

Just incase you didn’t notice above, do go check out my new Facebook page where there is a more detailed album of items due to be in store at Waitrose this autumn. I will be using the Maison Cupcake Facebook page to show material supplementary to what you see on the blog. Think of it as a kind of Maison Cupcake “red button”!

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Tapas with Beetroot: Bocquerones and Salsa

mctestadmin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:06:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I published a mackerel salad using beetroot as seen at the Baxter’s Afternoon Tea Party.

Today, as promised, here are two further dishes with beetroot. The salsa is less aggressive than most, fruity with apple rather than chillied. Scooped up with tortilla chips it’s a more-ish appetiser you could serve before a main meal. The salsa can be made with any kind of beetroot although the bocquerones, hardly a recipe but my own creation, look more aesthetically pleasing using rosebud variety. You could use any kind of pearl mozzarella, my choice was a basil flavour one from the pre-packed deli section at Morrison’s.

It might not be authentically Spanish but I have wanted to assemble something on sticks including anchovy ever since seeing them a Sainsbury’s magazine feature on tapas several summers ago. Bocquerone, so far as I can establish, is the Spanish word for anchovy rather than a recipe itself but these appetisers were called bocquerones in the magazine and the name has stuck in my head. It’s now my word to denote an appetiser featuring rolled anchovy and whatever other items you have to hand on a stick.

What would you like to thread on a stick?

Beetroot Salsa

From a recipe by Tom Kitchin for Baxter’s
Serves 4-6

Ingredients

1 large cooking apple, peeled, cored and finely chopped

Juice of ½ lemon

1/2 340g jar sliced beetroot in vinegar, drained and cut into small cubes

4 red tomatoes, finely chopped

½ red onion, roughly chopped

1 clove fresh garlic, finely minced

2tbsp caster sugar

2tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Black pepper

Method

1. Toss the apple in the lemon juice to prevent it browning.

2. Place the beetroot, apple, tomatoes, red onion, garlic, caster sugar and olive oil in a large mixing bowl. Use salad forks or wooden spoons to combine the ingredients together.

3. Season with black pepper and serve with tortilla chips.

Bocquerones
An assembly job rather than recipe. Thread rolled up anchovies, cocktail onions, pearl mozzarella, cornichons onto cocktail sticks. Ta-da!