Yesterday I had a bit of a bake fest, my daughter has been baking alot of late (can't think where she gets that from! LOL) so I've not done much and I reached the culinary equivalent of meltdown yesterday and just HAD to chuck some flour about! ;oD Nothing too exciting, I was just happy to have wooden spoon in hand, but here are some pictures of my makes....
My husband was complaining that there were no biscuits to go with his cup of tea so the first thing I made was Cornish Fairings, perfect dunking biscuits! I had a little trip down memory lane whilst making these as they are a biscuit that my maternal grandmother used to make. I can picture Nan's biscuit tin now, filled with deep brown, sometimes leaning towards black on the edges, very hard fairings! ;oD Don't get me wrong, my Nan was a good cook and an excellent baker (her scones were a legend in the local WI group!) but her Cornish Fairings never seemed to fare (ha ha!) very well!
Next up was spiced cherry and sultana scones. I have a scone recipe in a Pampered Chef recipe book (one day I'll fill you in on my Pampered Chef obsession!) called Create-A-Scone which I use quite often. I like it because you roll the dough straight onto the stone it's cooked on so no fiddling about rolling out and cutting shapes, it's great when you're in a hurry. I loosely followed the lemon sultana recipe in the book but omitted the lemon and added cheeries and mixed spice. They smell delightful!
Last out of the oven were some chocolate fairy cakes which I topped with chocolate and sugar sprinkles.
So, baking craving appeased I moved on to make something savoury in the form of Curried Lentil Spread. I've made this spread for quite a few years but it wasn't until I actually read the recipe yesterday, with a view to posting it here, that I realised that I don't follow the method at all! LOL I was browsing about foodie blogs the other day and found one (which I now can't find again so apologies for not being able to credit it) with the subtitle "because recipes are just a list of suggestions". That really made me smile and have a little chuckle as so often my cooking is just like that! I look at a recipe, or even start cooking it, and realise I haven't got all the ingredients or don't fancy some of them so I just improvise! That's what cooking is all about! ;o) However, I digress....back to the spread. It's from my beaten up copy of Rose Elliot's Complete Vegetarian Cookbook. Here's the recipe as it stands:
Curried Lentil Spread
This is a good mixture for sandwiches or little savoury biscuits.
Serves 4
4oz split red lentils
7floz water
1 small onion, finely chopped
1oz butter
2 tsp curry powder
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
Wash the lentils and cook them in the water until they're tender and have absorbed all the liquid (20 to 30 minutes), then mash them roughly with a fork. Fry the onion in the butter until it's tender then add curry powder and fry for another 1 - 2 minutes. Blend this mixture into the cooked lentils to make a fairly smooth paste, then season to taste and leave the spread to get cold before using it.
I suspect it's not the most attractive dollop you've ever seen but it is tasty! Trust me, I'm an artist! ;oD
When I make it I fry the onion and curry powder first, add the lentils and water (sometimes stock) and cook until the lentils are tender, season and then whizz it all smooth. I don't suppose it makes much difference but does illustrate my random slackness in the reading recipes department! In the book, the recipe isn't marked as being suitable for freezing but I've whacked half the recipe in the freezer to see how it fares. As she says, it's nice in sandwiches and on crackers but I also love it on toast, with salad, as a topping on a jacket potato or just as a dip with cucumber sticks.
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