Blackberry Coconut Macaroon Tart

In London, blackberry season is in full swing. Every week, we save the big tubs we buy litres of Greek yoghurt in for blackberry picking at the weekend. With their handle and lid they make the perfect vessel to bring home plenty of berries. I was never a very good blackberry picker (it was a case of two for me, one for the tub) so now my parents go and I wait for them to return, tubs overflowing with juicy fruit. It feels a treat to be able to go berry picking in the middle of London – they grow wild along the Thames. Once we have had our fill of the berries fresh or blitzed into a compote and served with nectarines and sour cream– it’s time to get baking.I didn’t want anything too heavy – I love a classic pie but at the moment it is just too hot to deal with melting pastry – so I searched through my bookmarks until I found this. I’ve made a few variations of crumble bars in the past because they are such an easy (but still, most importantly, tasty) way to use up fruit or jam but I liked the twist of the macaroon topping on this recipe. And with spelt flour in the base, and a generous layer of fruit sandwiched in the middle – this is basically health food! Somehow even the small slices that I cut are filling enough and the different textures of the crunchy shortbread, juicy fruit and chewy coconut are delicious together. Now, just to think of uses for the two remaining tubs of berries waiting in the fridge… 

Blackberry Coconut Macaroon Tart, adapted from this recipe
Crust: 1 cup spelt flour
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup golden caster sugar
pinch of salt
90g unsalted butter, melted

Filling: 1 cup shredded coconut
4 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 large egg whites
250g fresh blackberries, halved if large

1. Preheat oven to 180’C and lightly grease a 13x36 long tart tin, or 9inch round cake tin – a removable base is important.
2. Combine the flour, coconut, sugar and salt in a medium bowl. Stir in the melted butter until evenly distributed. Press the mixture firmly in the bottom of the pan to form a even layer. Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly golden and firm. Remove and set aside to cool for a few minutes while you prepare the filling.
3. Stir together the coconut, sugar and egg whites. Evenly distribute the blackberries across the tart base. Spoon over the macaroon mixture and spread out lightly – it’s nice to still be able to see some berries.
4. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the peaks of the macaroon filling are golden. Remove from the tart tin and cut into slices. Enjoy!

Mincemeat Streusel Slice

Sometimes the world of food can be a tad overwhelming. I decided to make mincemeat slice (half the battle – I’m the most indecisive person), had a cautious Google and was met with 795,000 results. For mincemeat slice?! So I ended up making two versions from two baking legends, Mary Berry and Rachel Allen, and doing a mini comparison. Sometimes indecisiveness can be a good thing – double the baking! The other 794,998 results will just have to wait until next year… The recipes differed slightly: Rachel Allen has a more classic approach of dividing one shortbread mixture in half to create two layers surrounding the mincemeat, whilst Mary Berry’s recipe has a very thin pastry layer as the base and a grated streusel topping. Both make a big trayful so we had plenty to compare! I added the zest of an orange to the shortbread in Rachel’s recipe which we all liked as we always have orange pastry in our mince pies at Christmas, and so this was notably missed in the plain pastry in Mary’s version. Also, Mary uses semolina in the streusel topping to add crunch, but none of us were really a fan of the gritty texture that this creates. However, one thing I preferred about Mary’s version was that the thinner base makes room for a thicker layer of mincemeat – useful for when you’re trying to use up Christmas surplus, a bit less heavy and also extra tasty! Mary’s also turned out prettier as the streusel melts into a fairly even top layer – all the photos in this post are her version. In the end we were torn – my parents preferred Rachel Allen’s version whilst I remain a loyal Mary Berry fan. The best result would probably be a combo of both: a bit less semolina in the struesel, a bit of orange to boost flavour and you’d have a winner! Maybe I’ll just have to make a 3rd batch to test this out… You can find the Mary Berry recipe here and Rachel’s version here (confusingly on Nigella’s website…) so you can decide which recipe sounds best to you. Enjoy!

Whole Lemon Bars

Something happened to me last week whilst cooking that, in 5 years of blogging, has never happened to me before. We had lots of fresh gooseberries to use up and I love taking advantage of their short season in all the different recipes I gather during the rest of the year. I found a Nigel Slater gooseberry crumble cake recipe that sounded like it would fit the bill perfectly – a simple cut and come again cake that could also be easily transported. I made it, photographed it, took it to my Granny’s and sure enough it went down really well, like most Nigel Slater recipes do. When I was eating it, and then particularly when I was writing up the blog that evening, I started to feel that there was something really familiar about this cake. I checked my archive and sure enough, in July 2011 I had already made and posted it. Today’s post is my 205th, so in all honesty I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before! If you want to read about the cake, you can read my original post here, otherwise today I present all new Whole Lemon Bars!

I really enjoyed making this cake with a whole orange a few months ago, so when I saw these bars I was intrigued how the same technique would work with a much sourer fruit. I ended up making the lemon mixture in my mini food processor as my normal size one had broken, and luckily it just about all fit in, making the whole process really easy. Lemon bars in record time! The base was also super simple as you just press it into the tin, saving any rolling faff. The results were delicious – obviously the whole lemon in the filling meant they tasted (and looked) really vibrant and citrusy without being too sour. The base was also actually really tasty even just on it’s own, I think the vanilla balanced really well with the sharper topping. You can find the recipe here – enjoy!

Raspberry, Oat and Almond Bake

I’d describe this time of year as ‘muddled’. It’s definitely still winter, but there’s the occasional sign that Spring will soon come. Mock exams are here, whilst the real things are still a few months off yet feel just round the corner. I’ve applied to uni, but have to wait till August for the grades. I’ll finish school forever in June, but it feels scarily close. It's a weird limbo time of year and I think this bake suits that perfectly. It’s got the oats for a flapjack, texture of a crumble and jammy fruit yet somehow manages to be none of these things!I should have predicted this from its vague ‘bake’ title and lack of photo, but the ingredients list sounded to good to miss out on: marzipan, lots of berries, cinnamon, flaked almonds, a dash of honey – all good flavours combined into one tin. The results were hard to explain. Clearly, these flavours combined into something delicious that was impossible to stop eating and vanished in one weekend.The sweet marzipan cutting through the sharp berries, the almonds adding crunch, the oats a bit of sustenance. The problem was that it was impossible to know how to serve it as it was so crumbly! It was hard to cut proper slices of, yet still a bit more solid than granola. It was like a fruit crumble that was super heavy on the topping! I think it would make a delicious luxury brunch item, served unapologetically messily in bowls, perhaps with yoghurt? Don’t let its confusing nature put you off, the results are absolutely gorgeous and make up for whatever it lacks in appearance! You can find the recipe here – enjoy!

Gooseberry Flapjacks

I've had this bake and news ready for a while now, I just haven't blogged because I didn't know how to say it. Which is silly really, because its good and exciting news. To cut the waffle: I've won a competition! It was the Guild of Food Writers WriteIt! Competition, a food writing competition with a fab prize of 14 amazing cookbooks, publication on delicious magazine's website and a trip to delicious magazine HQ! I'm super excited and honoured to have won - you can read my piece here if you like. Now for cheesy photo alert...Look at my prize books! I won a copy of each book shortlisted for the Guild of Food Writers Awards which I’ve been working my way through and they’re all so interesting and varied – my favourites so far have been Street Food Revolution for being inspiring and making me want to start up my own food company, and Peyton & Byrne British Baking for being full of delicious classic bakes with little twists. Rest assured my baking in the near future will be heavily influenced by these and all the others. The President of the Guild of Food Writers came for brunch to bring that massive pile of books you see there and I made these gooseberry flapjacks for us to munch as we chatted. I love flapjacks for the way a good one can taste so caramelly and delightfully chewy, yet you can still claim some element of health due to the oats… although I'm pretty sure the golden syrup goodness cancels any nutritional value out...which is why you add fruit! The gooseberries keep the flapjacks moist for longer than they may last otherwise, and also add a sharp element to stop the treat becoming too sickly. The recipe comes from the British Larder, a great restaurant in Suffolk which has had a blog long before the restaurant opened in August 2010. I tweaked the recipe only by taking out the seeds and nuts – a virtuous addition I’m sure but I’m still yet to develop a liking for seeds of any kind other than poppy. Gooseberries have such a short season we need to take advantage of them while you can and this recipe appealed because to me it was original - previously it has always been so easy to simply pair the fruit with some elderflower in a crumble or pie and have a winner so I was interested to try something new. The end result was crumbly and delicious, perfect for afternoon tea or elevenses. Enjoy!

Apple Cinnamon Raisin Bars

My ‘Recipes To Make’ file of bookmarked links in my Favourites is getting a little out of control. 153 recipes, just in the ‘Sweet’ section – so not including a a ‘Savoury’ section or a notebook full of bits cut out from papers and magazines. Considering I bake roughly once a week, it would take me around 3 years to complete everything! Just reading the list makes me hungry. Peach Shortbread anyone? Lemon Rhubarb Bundt Cake? Blackberry Cream Cheese Pie?Almond Chocolate Tart? And so much more goodness yet my bookmarked file gets forgotten. Not any more! The ‘Sweet’ section is organised alphabetically (get me) so one of the first recipes I see every time I add something was these Apple Cinnamon Bars. A revision break yesterday called for a quick bake and these fitted the bill nicely.Essentially, this recipe turned out to be simply apple cake cut into squares but it was still delicious and smelt unbelievably good whilst baking. It has a good combination of classic flavours to complement the apple – vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg which make it more interesting than. It’s good with custard or cream, hot or cold, even for breakfast – whenever! The recipe is quick and simple to make too, so these bars can be whipped up whenever you need some cake fast. The flavours may be quite autumnal, but England has just experienced some snow (it’s April! Snow? Really?) so I think that’s excusable. You can find the recipe here and as for my favourites: 1 down, 152 to go.

Benedict Bars

The trouble with reading food blogs is they always make me hungry. I think it is impossible to look at pages of cakes, pies, tarts and all manner of other delicious things without feeling a little bit envious. And then it becomes all too tempting to reach for the biscuit tin. To avoid snacking endlessly, I have a few times I prefer to read blogs: 1) Last thing at night – having just brushed my teeth I’m not feeling the need to eat more or 2) First thing in the morning on my phone – its unlikely that early in the morning I will be motivated enough to move for food unless its proper breakfast. Of course, there are downsides to these as well. When I came across these Benedict bars last thing at night it became rather difficult to go to sleep as I craved some nutty, jammy, biscuity goodness…

When I finally got round to making these I was not disappointed. The recipe makes a generous tray full but I know that tray will be finished very soon. The bars are comprised of a layer of shortbread, a thin layer of jam (I chose cherry instead of the suggested raspberry) and a flaked almond topping. Boy, do these layers work well together. The time in the oven toasted the almonds and enhanced their nutty flavour, the jam was sweet and sticky and the shortbread base rounded everything off perfectly. Definitely a fan. I don’t think I would make any changes to the recipe. Before baking, I felt the bars looked like they needed extra almonds but I had no spare. However, after baking the layer was definitely thick enough. I did have to bake my bars for 10-15minutes extra than the recipe states to make my almonds golden/toasted but all ovens vary. I look forward to trying these again with different jams – its such an easy recipe and sure to be a hit at school fairs, coffee mornings, afternoon tea….whenever!You can find the recipe here and obviously, I highly recommend it. Now I’m off to catch up on some blogs…safely armed with my hefty square of Benedict bar :)