Dentists Beware

If you work in the dental industry I advise you to look away now. The following recipe is for tablet, a traditional Scottish treat, and probably partly responsible for our terrible health record (that and the infamous deep fried Mars bar).

This particular batch was made as a gift for my in-laws on boxing day and is the perfect accompaniment to an after dinner cup of coffee.

This is the last of the sugar and butter extravaganzas for this holiday season. January is fast approaching and tradition dictates that we'll all be eating more healthily - at least for a short while ;)

Walnut Tablet

2lbs / 900g unrefined sugar
4oz / 100g unsalted butter
1 can condensed milk
1 teacup of milk (not skimmed)
8oz / 200g walnuts (very roughly chopped)

There are very few ingredients in this sweet so use the best you can as poor ingredients have nowhere to hide. Don't break the walnuts up into tiny pieces or the end result is gritty. I generally chop the walnut halves into four but leave a few larger pieces for texture.

- Butter two baking sheets, line them with greaseproof paper and butter the greaseproof paper.

- Put the butter, milk and condensed milk in a pan and heat very gently until the butter has melted.

- Add all the sugar to the liquids and stir to combine.

- Gently heat the mixture, stirring all the while, until all the sugar has dissolved (this may take some time). Use the spoon to see if all the sugar has dissolved. If the mixture running off the spoon is shiny and has no sugar granules in it you're ready to move on. If there are still sugar granules on the spoon, increase the temperature a little at a time until they are gone. Do not let the mixture boil until all the sugar has dissolved or your tablet will be gritty.

- Once the sugar has dissolved turn up the heat and allow the mixture to boil gently, stirring constantly.

- Test the mixture after 10 mins of boiling by dripping some of it into a cup of cold water. If the drops form individual balls and do not all melt together at the bottom you're ready for the next stage. If the mixture doesn't pass the test continue boiling it and test it every minute or so. Try not to over boil the mixture. It should darken slightly but should remain creamy beige and not turn nutty brown.

- Take the pan off the heat and place it on a folded tea-towel or trivet on your counter top. Beat the mixture vigorously until it starts to thicken.

- Add the chopped walnuts and continue beating until the sugar starts to crystallise.

- Quickly pour the mixture into the prepared baking sheets and tap / wiggle / shoogle them until the mixture is evenly distributed (you may need to redistribute the walnuts if they have all migrated to one corner). Don't be tempted to use a finger, this stuff is hot.

- Place the baking trays somewhere flat and cool and free from cat hair (we use the porch).

- After five minutes, the mixture should be setting well. Score the top with a knife to make it easier to cut later. This stuff is tooth achingly sweet so keep the pieces small.

- Once the tablet is completely set cut into pieces and store in an air tight container. If you don't it will go rock solid making it a double threat to your dentistry

Health Warning:
Aside from the fact that this stuff is incredibly bad for you, please be careful when boiling, beating and pouring out the mixture as it gets incredibly hot. Needless to say this is not a recipe that children should help out with.

Pucker Up

This blog is at serious risk of morphing into an homage to Dorie Greenspan. Reading her book makes me want to head straight for the kitchen and work some magic with the measuring cups. My contribution to the family feast this festive season was her 'Tartest Lemon Tart', the perfect pick me up ending to a very rich meal. They'll be no snoozing on the sofa after this zingy dessert (ok well maybe just a little).

Despite involving homemade pastry (eeek) it came together easily and looked very impressive. There were a few scary moments in the oven towards the end of the cooking time where the filling bubbled up and then merrily bubbled over the edge of the pastry case onto the baking sheet. No harm done. Dorie does warn that this might happen and I think it's actually a cunning plan to
allow the baker a sneaky sample of good things to come.

As the filling uses whole lemons the end result is stickily sweet and sharp with a slight hint of bitterness - like lemon marmalade. Gorgeous with adollop of freshly whipped cream.

Heaven's Kitchen

Drum roll please.....

The kitchen is officially complete. Unfortunately I don't have any before photos for comparison but just imagine a 1976 Formica kitchen painted dark blue with no work surfaces. Add the worst cooker you can imagine, a leaky fridge and some ancient linoleum. Hold that picture in your head. Got it?

Well...taa daaa!
This one corner has more storage space than the whole of the last kitchen. I love the dresser unit because it means I can have all of my favourite pottery on display but behind glass so it's not covered in cat hair - an important feature of tableware I think you'll agree.

Dishwasher (woo hooo) and the ubiquitous cat - in this case Oscar.

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous induction hob and double oven.


Dolly the sheep keeping my teapot warm and the biggest fridge freezer I've ever seen with a liberal scattering of magnetic poetry (food edition naturally).

And just in case you missed him in the cooker shot, a close up of Mr Gingerbread.
Finally, some food. Lemon poppy seed muffins with lemon glaze baked as a treat for my Callanetics class. Thanks to Ms Greenspan again for the recipe.

.....and spice

Just to prove that we don't just live on cake....

...tonights dinner


Quorn chilli with guacamole and brown rice.

Yumm.

Sugar....

A weekend of baking firsts for me. I christened my new oven with a batch of fairy cakes for Keira's 5th birthday and (you'll never believe this) it was also my first ever Victoria sponge. Crazy to think it but I've never made a basic Victoria sponge before. I must've made hundreds of batches of muffins, dozens of chocolate cakes and cookies galore but never a plain egg sponge.

The recipe I used came from 'Pretty Party Cakes' by Peggy Porschen (pleasingly alliterative) and forms the basis for the cupcakes I'm planning for a wedding cake next year. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to practice both the sponge and the icing. Overall they were a great success but I learned two things. One, that creaming together butter and sugar with my current electric whisk leads to explosive results no matter how soft the butter and two, that I'm not a fan of plain eggy sponge cake (or butter icing).

Luckily Keira and her nursery school friends were, and pink cakes with heart shaped sprinkles went down a treat.


I was on a roll (and had another party to go to on Saturday) so I threw together a batch of classic brownies from Dorie Greenspan's book, 'Baking: From my Home to Yours'. I say threw together because compared to the fairy cake faff these were a breeze and tasted amazing. If you don't already own this book then buy it now (or speak nicely to Santa).


Finally, as if I hadn't used enough butter and sugar this weekend, I made my first ever batch of tablet. We decided that it would make the perfect Christmas gift for D's Dad who has a really sweet tooth. I spent 45 mins on the phone to my Mum whilst stirring and stirring and stirring with her giving me instructions and advice. Four further phone calls later and I had the perfect slab of creamy coloured, hyperactivity inducing sugar rush. This was a test batch so D and I packaged it up to distribute it among our colleagues and we get to do it all again next weekend!


All in all, we got through two kilos of sugar, one kilo of butter and ten eggs - oh well, 'tis the season.

Kitchen Sink Drama

You may have noticed that there's been a distinct lack of content on these pages recently. Ooops. So much for an excellent way to keep in touch.

The main reason for the radio silence is that D and I have been buying our house and doing some major renovation work. We've been renting the house for the last year but in September (a week after I moved jobs) we finally got the opportunity to buy it. After much too-ing and fro-ing we exchanged on November 2nd. On November 5th and 6th the gas board came and ripped the massive, ugly boiler off the wall in the kitchen and replaced it with a shiny new one which they neatly stowed away in a cupboard upstairs. On the 12th and 13th another set of workmen arrived and replaced our draughty single glazed windows with snuggley, warm double glazing. On the 16th we smashed the old kitchen up with a hammer and threw it in a skip and since then we've been installing the new kitchen.

In the midst of all of this Jen came over for a visit and had to sleep on the couch surrounded by the contents of the kitchen cupboards (and the cupboards themselves) - sorry Jen

Reduced to cooking on a one ring camping stove and washing the dishes in the bath, we gave up all pretensions of culinary skill and resorted to pasta 'n' sauce or take-out food.

There are a few small jobs left (handles on the units, tiling) but I'm almost back to having a fully functioning kitchen - I say back, the previous 1976 formica kitchen couldn't quite be described as fully functioning. My new workspace comes complete with fridge/freezer (yay - bigger than our bathroom), double oven (woo hoo), shiny, smooth induction hob (whoopee), extractor fan (yippee) and dishwasher (praise the lord).

To celebrate (and to spend the very last of our savings) I ram raided my Amazon wish list and ordered a veritable mountain of books and have lined up so many recipes to cook that I've run out of sticky tabs.

I'll post some pics of the finished product next week - it'll take me that long just to put everything back in the cupboards.

In the meantime here's a picture of our other new arrivals - George and Oscar