Gluten free Parkin.

Tis the season for all those lovely Christmas flavours to be swirling around the house. So far I’ve made 9 Christmas puddings and two Christmas cakes. My refrigerator is groaning with cake and pudding. Two of the puddings and one of the cakes are gluten free for my dearly beloved and I and the rest are all gifts for family and the odd friend. I made a non gluten free version of Parkin for my end of year work party which went down well so I made another one for my husband that he could eat without gluten or the rolled oats. I was more than a tad concerned about what to substitute for the oats and settled on quinoa flakes as they looked very similar in structure.

First assemble all that you’ll need to bake with.

  
Ingredients.

200g butter

1 large egg

4 tablespoons milk

200g golden syrup

85g treacle

85g light brown sugar

100g quinoa flakes

250g gluten free self raising flour

1 tablespoon ground ginger

Heat your oven to 160C or a bit less if fan forced. Grease a deep 22cm/9in square cake tin and line with baking paper.

  
Gently melt the syrup, treacle, sugar and butter together until the sugar has dissolved. 

 
Remove from the heat. 

 
Mix together the quinoa flakes , the GF flour and ginger.   

 
Stir in the syrup mixture, followed by the combined egg and milk (lightly beaten together).

  
  
  
Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and bake for 50 mins to an hour until the cake feels firm and a little crusty on top.

  
Cool in the tin then wrap in more baking paper and foil and keep for 3-5 days before eating if you can as it apparently becomes softer and stickier the longer you leave it, up to two weeks. 

  
I had to eat this as it smelt so lovely. It worked really well using the substitute quinoa flakes. The flavour is the same as is the texture.  Well worth making but I don’t know how your meant to leave it for a few days. That just won’t be happening 😂😂😂😂😂.

Bon appetit!

 

Pork Rillettes.

I’ve decided that Mum was right. Christmas IS  about food as much as it is about the Nativity . The baking of it, sharing of it and eating it. I know she is smiling wherever she is in spirit. That was her mission in life, especially at Christmas. Make sure everyone has food and never goes hungry. I’ve been baking up a storm over the last couple of days. Today, for instance, I’ve put 2 smaller Christmas cakes in the oven for my daughters and realised I have to make another one for my brother. Joy! That means I get to bake more cake and we will also have a spare cake for us! 😀 Yesterday, I made something I’ve never made before but must order whenever I go out and see it on the menu. Often seen as part of a Charcuterie plate, Pork Rillettes. I used a recipe by Simon Hopkinson which you can find here;

http://www.simonhopkinson.tv/recipe/33/pork-rillettes.aspx

Here is what I did and how I baked it with lots of pictures to help you out.

Ingredients

1 tbsp. sea salt

1 tbsp. caster sugar

2 bay leaves

6 cloves

About half a nutmeg ( I used about half a teaspoon of ground nutmeg)

1 level tbsp. juniper berries

2 tsp black peppercorns (I used mixed peppercorns)

1.2kg belly pork, bones and rind removed, but both reserved

500g fresh pork back fat

4-5 sprigs of sage, roughly chopped ( I also added some sprigs of thyme as well)

6 large cloves of garlic, crushed and loosely chopped

200mls dry white wine

Starting bottom left corner of picture: Bay leaves, cloves, caster sugar, peppercorns, nutmeg, juniper berries, sea salt.

Using a small food processor, grind together the first 7 ingredients to a fine powder.

Cut the belly pork and fat into approximately 2 cm cubes. Add this to a large bowl and sprinkle with the powder. Thoroughly mix together with your hands, turning the meat and fat over and over, then add the bones and rind of the belly (left as large pieces making them easier to remove once cooked) into the mix. Cover the bowl and refrigerate overnight.

 

The next day, pre heat the oven to 140c/gas mark 1. Put all the meat, pork fat and bones into a solid based pot and add the wine.

  

Add the garlic and sage (and thyme if your using).

Mix everything together with your hands.

Place the pot over a low heat for about 5 minutes, stirring often: this is only to bring the pot up to heat before it goes into the oven. Put on the lid and slide it into the oven. Cook for 3 hours. Remove from oven and leave to cool for about 20 minutes.

Take out the pork skin and bones and thyme sprig left overs and discard. Suspend a colander over a large bowl and tip in the contents of the pot. Allow to drain for about 5 minutes, then decant the liquid fat from the bowl below the colander into a jug, reserving the pork juices and residue left behind.

  

Tip the long-cooked pork back into the first bowl that has the residue juices in it and, using a hand mixer on a low setting, briefly blend the small pieces of meat and fat into shreds. Add some of the liquid fat from the jug a little at a time whilst blending with the hand mixer until it forms a creamy texture. The mixture should be floppy and glistening with fat.

 

( a small warning here from someone who knows 😉 make sure your bowl is deep, otherwise everything in the vicinity gets flecked with pork rillettes)

Now pack the rillettes mixture into small pots or similarly sized Kilner jars (I used mason, it doesn’t matter). Smooth over the surface and then spoon/pour over at least 1/2 cm of the remaining pork fat to seal each one. Attach the lids and refrigerate to mature for at least a week before eating. You can keep these for up to six months as long as they’re packed into clean pots with no air pockets in the mix.

 

I use the gratuitous photobombed image for sizing of jar comparison, thank you Jason 😀

After a week, scrape off the fat to reveal the meat. Eat with either split baguettes or crackers and some nice cornichons or even a nice spicy chutney or fruit relish if having as part of a charcuterie plate.

I had such fun making these and Jason and I cannot wait to have a taste. The smell of the Juniper berries reminded me of the Bombay sapphire gin I so like. For anyone worried about the amount of fat in this dish, your only meant to have a small amount of it at a time and it is a vital part of the dish both for taste and for preservation of the meat. Don’t fret, just enjoy!

Bon apetit!

Tis the Season!

I do  love Christmas. I love that families can come together to celebrate on the day, or they can be apart and drop in over the weeks surrounding the actual day, or they can just phone up on the day. Most of my immediate family is scattered now. My sister Fronkiii of “The road to Serendipity” blog fame lives over 4000km away in Tasmania to the East, my brother Jim lives in the next town to my west, Denmark, and I live in Albany Western Australia. We used to have massive Christmases back when I was young. Whole families and their hangers on would all congregate at either one of my Aunts Alice or Margarets houses or my Grandparents places and eat, drink and be very merry. It was a lot of fun and a time to catch up on long lost rellies and welcome the newborns. Gifts would be exchanged and many plates of food eaten.

What I remember most fondly is the making of the Christmas cakes. Mum used an old recipe that her father and brother had gotten from Arnotts cake factory when they worked there back in the late 40s and 50s and had cut down to a useable size. As children we used to love helping peel the almonds and mix the fruit in and the prize of licking the spoon or bowl was most fought for! Mum passed away a couple of years ago now and we all surely miss her baking. She used to keep us all well supplied with fruit mince pies and fruit cakes and chocolate brandy truffles and savoury dishes. It’s my turn to keep up this tradition and I have offered to make my brother and daughters Christmas cakes this year. Like me, they will one day want to make their own and I look forward to helping them find their own special recipe. The recipe that follows is one I’ve used over the past 2-3 years and it is extremely versatile by way of being able to be eaten as a pudding as well as a cake with custard, cream or ice cream or all three! I’ve made it gluten free and you cannot tell the difference 😀

Rich Christmas fruit cake with Muscat.

Ingredients.

200g raisins

200g sultanas

180g dried apricots, diced

150g dried cranberries (Craisins)

100g pitted prunes, chopped

100g glace cherries

100g mixed peel

250ml liqueur muscat

5 eggs

1/4 cup treacle

1/4 cup ginger marmalade

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp almond essence

Finely grated zest and juice of 2 oranges

300g Gluten Free plain flour

3tsp gluten free baking powder

2 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp fine salt

250g unsalted butter

300g dark brown sugar

125ml brandy

One of the first things I do is to combine all the fruits and the Muscat into a glass bowl, mix well and cover with cling film. Then they are refrigerated for 2 days or until the fruit has absorbed all of the alcohol and is nice and plump.

Assemble all the rest of the cake ingredients. Grease and line a 24cm cake pan, either round or square with baking paper. Preheat your oven to 140 Celsius.

 

Combine eggs, treacle, marmalade, vanilla, almond essence, orange zest and juice in a large bowl and whisk until smooth.

 

Sift flour, baking powder and mixed spice and salt into a large bowl.

Put butter and dark brown sugar in the large bowl of an electric mixer and beat for a good 5 minutes or until light and creamy.

 

Add egg mixture to butter mixture and beat until smooth.

Fold in flour mixture and then stir in fruit mixture.

Spoon batter into tin, put tin on wire rack set on an oven tray and bake rotating every hour, for 3 hours or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

Pierce the top of the cooked cake several times with skewer then sprinkle with brandy.

Set aside to cool completely in the tin. When cold, remove cake from tin and wrap tightly in cling film. Put in fridge to mature for 1 week.

This cake keeps really well due to its liberal amount of alcohol. I tend to keep mine in the fridge.

This is a wonderful cake and I hope you all have as much joy as I do in making and eating it.