May 8

Millionaire’s Shortbread – The first attempt

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Millionaires Shortbread - Not mine unfortunately

Millionaire's Shortbread - Not mine unfortunately

After being invited to a cake party, I decided I would make Millionaire Shortbread for the occasion. Let me start by saying I don’t bake very often. I like to cook, but generally I can’t be fussed with baking. It’s too specific, and too many things can go wrong.

This was a recipe I had been meaning to try for a while, and this seemed like a perfect time to try it out. Living in Scotland, I’ve had Millionaire Shortbread a few times. It’s a layer of shortbread on the bottom, then a thick later of caramel, and on top is a thin layer of hard chocolate. It really is wonderful.

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Feb 23

Nut loaf with tomato gravy

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Vegetarian Nut Loaf

Vegetarian Nut Loaf

I like the idea of having a vegetarian main dish, that can be served with sides such as potatoes, that isn’t normally a meat based recipe. For that reason I’m trying to compose the perfect nut roast recipe – not to taste like meatloaf – but to stand alone as a tasty dish. This recipe has a nice flavour, but it didn’t quite hold together as well as I had hoped. Next time I won’t grind the nuts as finely, and I will add less stock – perhaps 3/4 cup instead of 1 cup. Also, I will form it into a thicker, higher loaf. I used a shallow, small cake pan so it was low and wide. Though it did stay nice and moist.


Nut roast:

1 cup breadcrumbs
3 onions, diced
2 cups nuts/sunflower seeds
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp sage
3 cups mushrooms, diced
2 stalks celery
1 tbsp soy sauce
3/4 – 1 cup veg stock (until moist but not too wet)
2 eggs
1. Saute the onion, mushrooms, celery and garlic until soft.
2. Grind or chop the nuts into fine pieces, depending on desired texture. I ground mine quite fine, however next time I will keep some larger pieces.
3. Add 1tbsp soy sauce to the veg stock
4. Combine all ingredients together in a bowl, mix the two eggs together in a separate bowl, then add to the large bowl.
5. Press the mixture into a loaf pan and cover with tin foil.
6. Bake for 30 minutes covered at 190C, then remove tinfoil for final 20 minutes.

Tomato Gravy:

200g tomato paste
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp butter
1 sweet onion
2 cups water
salt & pepper

1. Sautee the onion in 1tbsp of butter. Once soft, add the tomato paste, sugar, and water.
2. After it all comes together, puree in blender and then return to saucepan. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3.In a small bowl, mix together the flour with a few spoonfulls of the liquid, to ensure the flour properly mixes into the gravy.
4. Add flour to the gravy, bring to a boil, then reduce heat until ready to serve.
Feb 15

Braided Bread

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A simple way to take bread-machine bread to the next level. I’m not much of a baker, it’s too specific and fussy for me.
Braided Bread
Instead, I used the dough mode of the bread maker, and took a basic bread-machine recipe, braided the bread, and baked in the oven. Turns out looking quite fancy, and only takes an extra 5-10 minutes of work, and being attentive to rise time and baking time.

Simply put the dough onto a floured surface, divide it into three equal parts, roll each out to a long thin loaf, and braid all three together. (Sorry – perhaps a picture at this stage would have been handy). Once braided, I tucked each end under. Allow to rise for an hour. I then applied an egg wash to the bread – using the back of a spoon since I don’t have a brush – and baked at 190C/375F for 30minutes until golden.

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