Tag: loaf tin

Walnut yogurt cake

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Serves: 4-6
Prep time: 20 mins
Cooking time: 35 mins
Total time: 55 mins
Skill level: Easy peasy
Costs: Cheap as chips

So quickly made, this loaf is delicious for a mid-morning snack with a cup of coffee. Spread with butter or just served thickly sliced, it is good at any time of the day. Great for a quick breakfast with a banana and glass of milk or juice or add a few slices in your packed lunch box! This loaf only takes 35 mins to bake and combines a creamy, thick yogurt with soft brown sugar to make one moreish, moist loaf that the whole family will love. You could even serve this cake as a dessert with ice cream or lashings of double cream.

Ingredients

150g natural yogurt
100g soft brown sugar
25g soft margarine
2 eggs, medium
100g walnuts, chopped
175g self raising flour

For the topping:

1-2tbsp runny honey
1tsp lemon juice
A few walnut halves

That’s goodtoknow

Try different flavoured yogurt in this recipe – hazelnut is particularly good.

Method

Preheat oven to 180⁰C/350⁰F/Fan 160⁰C/Gas Mark 4. Grease and line a 450g loaf tin.
Put the yogurt, sugar, margarine, eggs, half the walnuts and flour into a large bowl.
Beat together well until smooth and creamy. Spoon into the loaf tin and bake for 30 – 35 minutes or until well risen and golden brown or a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Cool the loaf in the tin then turn out onto a cooling rack.
To make the topping, mix together 1 tbsp of the honey and lemon juice and brush it over the top of the loaf.
Press the remaining walnuts on top of the loaf and drizzle with the remaining honey.

By Cathy Seward

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Rice Krispie treats

So there I was again on a Thursday afternoon doing some baking for the nursery cake sale, so sleep-starved that I actually felt really awake, in the same way that you get incredibly hot and fling off all your clothes just before you die from hypothermia.

Shall I tell you what happened the night before? It’s a really funny story. Okay it’s not – but those of you with children will feel better that you are not the only one having a shit time and those of you with no kids will feel extra smart and terrific about your life choices.

So both Kitty AND Sam are ill with the same cold – Sam is alright but Kitty’s has gone a bit nasty with a fruity cough and the occasional low-grade fever. Kitty has been falling asleep on the sofa at about 2.30pm these days and so she doesn’t go to bed until 8.30pm. Not ideal but never mind. So we dinged about until 8pm then she went to bed. She seemed happy despite her cough.

I trotted downstairs to catch up on Bake-Off and at 9.15pm Kitty sat up in bed and started wailing. Then coughing. I went upstairs to see her and she puked down herself and down me (exlcusively, I noticed, phlegm and grossness she has been swallowing for the last fortnight) and started crying. And crying. And CRYING.

I carried her downstairs to a little bathroom and ran a hot shower with some Olbas Oil in it and sat with her in the steam. She was still weeping and weeping, wailing that she wanted to go back to bed. Coughing and gagging. After ten minutes I took her back upstairs going “shh shh shh!’ terrified she would wake up Sam. I changed her out of her pukey stuff and put her back in her cot. But she kept on crying. She seemed to be nodding off but then something was stopping her. Snotty nose? Headache from the bang on her head she took that morning falling off her scooter?

She eventually fell asleep whimpering to herself. I wrote the rest of the evening off and went to bed myself. Then at 11pm she woke up really crying. Not coughing just crying. It’s fucking earache I thought. Must be. She’s never had earache before. Oh god – have to go to the doctor, get antibiotics – how am I going to get her to take them??

Giles then arrived back from some dinner or other. We settled her in our bed, tried to get some Calpol down her – (for-GET it) – and then just waited grimly for about 45 minutes until she eventually slipped into unconsciousness at about 1am, spreadeagled across my side of the bed.

So off I went to sleep in Sam’s room. I passed out at about 1.30am and was then woken up by Sam at 0400 suffling and snotting around. I lay there listening to him for an hour, waiting for him to put himself back to sleep, then got up, wiped his nose and popped a dummy in (why? why do I think that is going to help?) it didn’t. He got worse, wailed harder. I took him into bed with me. WORSE.

Fuck this, I thought. Fucking fuck this. I don’t hate my children, I don’t hate being a mother, (though some people think I do), but I hate THIS. The discombobulation, the anxiety, the not knowing what to do, the slight terror of how you are going to deal with tomorrow on no sleep.

Some parents, like Giles, love it when his kids need him in the night. He gets to cuddle them in bed, which is a rare treat as they sleep in their own rooms – and he gets to make the ultimate sacrifice for them: sleep. My husband has often sacrificed sleep for far less noble causes – so why not his children?

I do not feel this way. I’ve got a bit of a thing about sleep. My feeling is only powerfully that I cannot stand seeing them suffer. I wish they were old enough that they could tell me where it hurts and so that I could dose them properly with decongestants – rather than fannying about with Vicks and vaporisers and humidifiers and Nurofen – so that no-one has to have an awful time.

It’s the inconsolable crying I can’t take. Puke and shit and having to sleep in the same bed as my kids and being kicked – and even having to get up in the night I don’t mind. But the wailing on and on, not responding to any sort of patting or stroking or comfort. That breaks me.

Anyway at about 0530 completely out of ideas, I put Sam back in his bed, tucked him in, gave him his muzzy thing, turned on his tinkly music box and left the room to sit on the stairs. He was asleep in eight seconds. He was literally just waiting for me to fuck off out of his room.

I simply couldn’t face going back into the nursery and there was no room for me in my bed so I climbed into Kitty’s cotbed, pulled the toddler-sized duvet over me and shivered there for an hour and a half until it was time to get up and feed Sam.

Kitty slept through, luxuriously, under my Super King-sized Hungarian Goosedown duvet and woke up fine, even went off merrily to nursery, no hint of earache or a headache or anything. Sam, needless to say, grinned like a massive goon when I got him up, like always.

During the day, even though I had a couple of chances at naps, I just couldn’t do it, couldn’t nod off. It happens a lot when you’ve been kept awake. You sort of forget how to fall asleep. I worry, you see. I worry I’m never going to sleep again. I worry that the next night will be the same as last night. It is very hard when you are tired and confused not to despair.

So I thought I would cheer myself up by making Rice Krispie treats for Kitty’s nursery Friday bake sale. I had been looking forward to doing these for a while. They would be easy, I told myself, they would look terrific with sparkles all over them and mini smarties and tiny marshmallow and all sorts.

In the end I did them in a classically slapdash way. I decided that actual quantities of chocolate, golden syrup and butter for the chocolate sauce thing didn’t matter. But I think they might because my sauce went all grainy and gross (which is not, I don’t think, the same as “splitting” but looks equally unappealing).

I lost heart slightly at this stage and ditched my plans for glitter and mini smarties. I just dumped a lot of raisins in and mini marshmallows, stirred it round while feeling a bit despondent that I literally cannot make something that primary-school aged children make. I cannot even cook something that requires almost NO cooking. I despaired. Again.

I tipped the whole lot out into a loaf tin and shoved it in the fridge. Then I took it out two hours later and cut it up into bits and it was FUCKING AMAZING!!!!!!!

So this is how I did it:

For the sauce

1 bar Menier milk cooking chocolate

300g Cadbury’s milk chocolate

a slab of butter – about 50g

2 tablespoons of golden syrup

3 handfuls Rice Krispies

1 handful raisins

1 handful mini marshmallows

and any extra things you might like

1 Put a heatproof bowl over a pan of cold water then put it on your smallest burner set at the lowest heat. The bottom of the bowl must not touch the water.

2 Break up the chocolate and put it in the bowl, followed by the butter and the syrup. Then leave it

there to melt, give it a stir as it looks mostly melted in to help things along, but otherwise leave it alone. Do not freak out if it goes a bit grainy.

3 Into the melted chocolate pour the Rice Krispies and raisins. Allow the chocolate to cool to lukewarm (though it should not be especially hot anyway) before adding the mini marshmallows as you don’t want the marshmallows to melt.

4 Line a loaf tin with a double layer of cling film so you can get the stuff out later and then pour in your chocolate mixture, press down all over the top with a spatula and stick in the fridge for 2 hours.

You can decorate these before they go into the fridge with glitter or mini Smarties, or anything you like really. Diazepam, 5mg?

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Meatloaf

Hi how was your summer?

Annoying question. As if we’re American high school teenagers returning from 6 week sojourns to Cape Cod, or hilarious hi-jinx stints working at a beach bar in Florida.

How was my summer? I had a toddler and a newborn and my part-time nanny went on holiday for 2 months. HOW DO YOU THINK IT WAS.

Actually I made a stunning discovery as I walked with Sam round and round the deck of a billionaire’s yacht in Sardinia in mid-August (long story): successful women wear sportswear during the day and black when they go out in the evening.

I had been observing the billionaire’s wife, who wore sportswear during the day and black – and only black – in the evenings. I asked her what she would be wearing this autumn (as I pulled my ancient TopShop orange sundress over my massive sweaty escaping bosom) and she said “mostly black. I seem to have about a hundred black sweaters”. And I thought, I bet you do.

So I thought about it more and realised that whenever I admire what some woman or other is wearing, she’s almost always wearing head to toe black. I feel like I shouldn’t do this because it’s too EASY and it’s “BORING”. I think this because Anna Wintour famously hates black and I loved The September Issue. But she is the editor of Vogue and weighs three stone. She lives to wear colour. As do, say, Kate Middleton or the Queen. They have to wear colour so that people can see them.

I do not have to be seen and I do not live to wear colour. I live to not have a nervous breakdown because not only am I still more than a stone overweight I cannot find anything to wear when I have to go out. Answer: BLAAAAAAAAAAACCKKKK. It has made shopping for clothes, which I find a fascinating but ultimately futile exercise, a total doddle: anything as long as it’s black.

And, during the day I will wear sports luxe, i.e. running shoes, nice running capris and a marl sweater. I’m only going to spend the whole day running up and down the stairs, bending over and getting covered in sick and crap anyway. It’s a sort of workout!!! Done. Thanks.

O, the irony, then! that my exercise regime has slightly fallen by the wayside, although not totally. After nearly crippling my knees with my ten-minute runs (I did not warm up or down properly, or have any rest days) I have turned instead to doing a lot of plies in dead moments of the day, i.e. when both children are occupied just enough so I don’t have to do anything, but not so much that I can sit down with the newspaper (or have a nap).

So if Sam is having a think in his bouncer and Kitty is pulling apart whatever brilliant Marble Run I have constructed, I will stand at the kitchen counter and do plies. Sometimes I will throw in some Tracy Anderson arm exercises. My rationale is that there’s not much cardio I can do while gooning about with two kids, but if I can chuck in some leg-and-bum toning, it makes these moments of childcare feel less like a total waste of my time.

Another staggering achievement was that I did not come back from holiday heavier than when I left (though nor am I any lighter). So my morale enables me to continue with my diet, rather than falling into a pit of despair and mini Mars Bars.

I was given a while ago a copy of Marvellous Meals With Mince by Josceline Dimbleby. I promptly lost the book in the black hole of my kitchen but then re-found it the other day and last night made from it a sort of version of her meatloaf.

I have only ever eaten meatloaf once, when I was about seven, and thought it profoundly disgusting. But I have moved on and grown up since then – I have totally and completely decided on what my signature should be, for example – and found this delightful.

It is absolutely up to you what you put in it. The original recipe specified a sort of blue cheese sauce layer running through the meatloaf but I didn’t have any blue cheese. There are so many other changes to this recipe that I can, in fact, declare it as my own.

Esther’s Meatloaf

Serves 2 very hungry people or 4 less hungry with substantial side dishes

500g beef mince
2 handfuls breadcrumbs or medium matzoh meal
1 egg
5 tablespoons of ketchup
1 handful parsley, chopped. maybe some sage if you have it knocking about. Alternatively 1 heaped tsp dried oregano
1 small onion or 1/2 large onion, chopped
4 rashers streaky bacon, chopped
1 large clove garlic, chopped or grated
1 big pinch of dried mushrooms, rehydrated and chopped (or a large handful of fresh mushrooms – any you like, chopped roughly)
1 tsp of dried chilli flakes (if you like, I thought the slight spiciness was terrific but leave it out if you don’t fancy it)
salt and pepper

Set your oven to 180C

1 Put everything except 2 tbsp of the ketchup in a bowl and get in there with your hands to mix it up. I have vinyl surgical gloves I use for this very purpose – or for when I am handling fresh chillies just before bath time. Season very well with salt and pepper. By that I mean a large pinch of salt and a good fifteen turns of the pepper grinder

2 Butter a 1 kg loaf tin. If you do not have a 1kg loaf tin in your life, do consider buying one. They are very useful for all manner of loaf cakes, bread, meatloaf, pates and things. I use mine all the time.

3 Tip in the mixture and smooth the top. Bake for 1hr.

4 Take out the tin and turn your oven up to as high as it will go. Tip the loaf carefully onto an oven tray and spread with the rest of the ketchup. Put it back into the oven for 10 mins, when the ketchup will be a bit blackened and bubbly.

And that’s it. I’m terribly excited about this. You can add all sorts of exciting flavours to it – CURRY?? – and I can see it as a super mass-catering solution, just double the quantities and have it cold. You could even hide hard boiled eggs inside! Oh my days!! *fans self* *dies* (I’ve got a lot of black clothes you can borrow to wear to my funeral).