Delicious Lemon Curd

Lemon curd is a delicious alternative to jams and marmalades. It is also more versatile. Sure, you can spread it on your morning toast, or on scones for a light, refreshing afternoon tea. But you can also make lemon curd tarts, or use it as a filling in a sponge cake.

It is not hard to make lemon curd; a few minutes careful preparation will yield several pots of the stuff. If you make more than you can immediately use you will find that it freezes well too. Here is how I made it:

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup butter

Preparation

• Separate one of the eggs and retain the yolk
• Mix the other two eggs, the yolk from the first egg and all the other ingredients
• Blend lightly until smooth
• Cook in a double boiler until the mixture thickens then remove from the heat immediately
• Cool and serve

John's Notes
This recipe makes about one cup of lemon curd. To make more simply scale up the ingredients. If you don't have a double boiler (I don't) simply find a pyrex dish that will fit snugly into the top of a saucepan. My lemon curd had a fresh, zesty flavour. It was simply too good to resist eating it on its own with a teaspoon. However, some of mine did make its way into a sponge cake as filling. Enjoy.


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How to Cheat with Cream

It isn't always easy to get hold of good English cream. Canadian food inspectors keep a permanent finger on the trigger ready to shut down imports of dairy products from the UK.

The problem has been frequent outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in the UK. At one point even a product called "Cadbury Dairy Milk" was affected.

So what can you do when you want to make a Victoria Sponge, strawberries and cream, or chocolate eclairs? Well, you can cheat of course. You can make something quite similar to real Devonshire Cream with a little bit of cunning. I did and this is how I did it:

Ingredients

• 250g cream cheese
• 1/2 cup of table cream
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 dash of lemon juice

Preparation

• Using a wooden spoon, mix the cream cheese and sugar together. This step helps to soften the cream cheese.
• Add the table cream and lemon juice then whisk for a couple of minutes until the mixture stiffens
• Bob's your uncle

John's Notes
You now have a small bowl of delicious white stuff that tastes incredibly like Devonshire cream. So what can you do with it? I put a big dollop of the stuff on top of banana milk jelly (blend 4 over-ripe bananas with some sugar and 2 cups of milk. Add a prepared sachet of gelatin and allow to set).

I also made a Victoria sponge (for convenience I used Greens Sponge Mix). A Victoria sponge cake is a sandwich of two sponges with jam and cream in the middle. I still have a lot of cheat cream left. Watch out for new creamy ideas coming soon to this blog!

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Simple Recipe for Fern Tarts

Fern tarts, also known as fern cakes, are always one of the best-selling bakery items at Blighty's Tuck Store.

Fern tarts get their name from the chocolate fern design on the top. There is a technique used by professional bakers to get a perfect fern shape. It takes a lot of practice to get it right but the tarts taste just as good if, like me, you draw a simple tree shape. The recipe is not difficult but it does take a little time and patience to get it right. Here is how I did it.

Ingredients

• 1 pack Green's Sponge Mix
• 1 dozen frozen pastry shells
• Icing sugar
• Cadbury Cocoa powder
• Hartley's Strawberry Jelly

Preparation

• Lightly pre-bake the pastry shells and allow to cool
• Prepare the sponge mix according to the directions on the package
• Cut the Hartleys Strawberry Jelly cubes in half and place half a cube in the bottom of each tart shell
• Put a tablespoon of prepared sponge batter into the tart shells
• Bake at 400F for about 12 minutes then allow to cool

• Mix some icing sugar with a tablespoon of vegetable oil and a very small amount of boiling water. Adjust the amount of water and sugar until you have a stiff icing
• Spread the icing on top of each tart
• Make a little more icing, a little thinner this time, and add a generous amount of Cadbury Cocoa powder to it.
• Roll a piece of wax paper into a cone shape, leaving a small hole at the bottom.
• Spoon a small amount of cocoa icing into the paper cone while pinching it at the bottom
• Release the bottom of the cone and draw your best fern design on top of each tart
• Close all the doors to the kitchen and pig out - these are way too good to share with anybody!

John's Notes
Of course, you could make these tarts entirely from scratch. I used ingredients from the shelves at Blighty's Tuck Store simply for convenience. Some bakers use strawberry jam at the bottom of fern tarts instead of jelly. I chose to use jelly because it melts in the oven nicely while jam tends to get overcooked.

If you happen to have a proper kitchen tool for the icing you could use that instead. I don't have one and neither did the professional baker that I watched some while ago. He taught me the wax paper cone technique which works very well indeed. When finished simply toss it into the garbage and you're done.

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Bacon and Bean Pie

Bacon and bean pie is a simple-to-make, feelgood meal that is very inexpensive, tasty and filling. I really only had one reservation about making it, but it was a big one. I used imported British Heinz Baked Beans to make it. Heinz goes to a lot of trouble to procure the very highest quality beans - and I mashed them up into a bean gruel to make this pie. It broke my heart but it didn't hurt my tastebuds one little bit.

By the way, if you aren't convinced that imported Heinz beans are really the finest quality beans money can buy, just open a can alongside a can of cheapo beans from your local no thrills supermarket.

Ingredients

• 2 cans Heinz Baked Beans
• 1 pack Ayrshire Bacon
• 3 eggs
• 3 slices toast
• Mashed potato
• Seasoning

Preparation

• Cringe, then pour the world's finest beans into a liquidizer
• Break 3 eggs into the mushed up beans and stir them in
• Add seasoning (salt, pepper)
• Line the base of  large, greased ovenproof dish with toast then pour on the beans
• Chop and lightly fry the bacon, then add to the pie
• Top with mashed potato
• Bake at 350F for 45 minutes

John's Notes
This humble meal is like a cross between beans on toast and shepherds pie. You won't find it on the menu in the big house at the end of The Mall in London but us common folk enjoy it. Incidentally, while I was touring Sandringham House in Norfolk last summer I asked one of the tour guides if the Queen ever curled up with a plate of beans on her lap in front of the telly. "Never" came the reply; "Her Majesty always dines formally at table".

Baked beans were originally an expensive import from the Excited States. They were eaten in the United Queendom as almost a delicacy. As time went on they met with mass popularity and became associated with a cheap meal for the masses. I recall a British TV commercial from my childhood with the jingle: "a million housewives every day pick up a tin of beans and say: 'beanz meanz Heinz'". Do you remember it?

10 Scottish Crumpets in 10 Minutes

Do you like English crumpets? They are indeed very tasty. There is nothing quite like an English crumpet with a slice of cheese and a poached egg on top for breakfast. But English crumpets take forever to prepare (well about an hour actually). Scottish crumpets, on the other hand, take only minutes to prepare. Feel hungry, cook and eat all in the time it takes to go for a morning walk with the dog; although maybe you should send somebody else out with the dog or you will burn your crumpets.

Okay, Scottish crumpets taste completely different to English crumpets but, nonetheless, in their own way they do taste very good indeed. Maybe I will post a tried and tested recipe for English crumpets some time in the future, but today I made Scottish crumpets. Here is how I did it.

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain (or All-Purpose) flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon melted butter

Preparation

• Mix all the dry ingredients together then beat in the eggs
• Add the milk and stir thoroughly
• Finally stir in the melted butter
• Lightly grease a griddle or crepe pan
• Place a cookie or egg ring onto the griddle and spoon in just enough batter to cover the bottom - do not overfill or the batter will spill over and make a mess
• Cook over medium heat until bubbles appear on the surface
• Push the firm batter out of the ring, flip it over and refill the ring
• Cook until golden on both sides and serve immediately with jam

John's Notes
Scottish crumpets are actually very similar to leavened sweet pancakes. Mine were light, fluffy and had the distinctly "eggy" flavour that I like. Family liked them too for they were all gone almost immediately. Fortunately I just managed to snap an image with the old box brownie before they disappeared.

This recipe makes 10 or 12 Scottish crumpets depending on the size of the ring you use to mould them. Don't have a cookie or egg ring? No problem, just cut both ends out of a small tuna can or similar, but make sure that it is thoroughly washed first of course.