I love cherries as you can probably tell from all the cherry recipes: cherry mince pies if you were really organised you could start thinking about making your mincemeat now, cherry bakewell cake, cherry and almond bread and a cherry teabread. Not even to mention the other draft posts I have for cherry recipes…

A couple of weeks back I bought a whole lot of cherries, while they were on special offer, most of them were just popped into my mouth and stone popped back out. (On a side note if anyone knows a way to eat cherries in a lady like manor – then do please let me know!). But some spent too long in the fridge, and went too soft. These I made into a compote, with sugar and limoncello (I had no kirsch).

But what to do with this compote? Plain ice cream and a tablespoon of compote would have been fabulous, but instead I slightly altered a recipe I’d been meaning to try for quite a while.

Smitten Kitchen’s Lemon Braided Bread. The great thing about the basic recipe is that it could be filled with almost any fruit or if you’re less fruit inclined there is always chocolate! In fact chocolate would be so amazing that I will try this recipe again, maybe with Nutella instead of compote.

This recipe impressed me by just looking so darn cute, with the long braid, I was also pleasantly surprised that after my previous forays into braided dough – this one was much simpler to get right!

Instead of a pony tail braid, in this bread you are very much faking it, you are basically just folding strips of bread dough all the way down. The most complicated part of this whole recipe is moving the braid from where you created onto a baking sheet.

My baking sheets are all too small to fit the rolled out dough on, so I couldn’t just make it in place. Deb came up with a wonderful suggestion of making it on parchment paper and then just transfer the paper to the baking tray – unfortunately I didn’t read that bit till it was way too late!

I really loved this bread, despite the problems I had getting it onto the baking tray, and the fact that I cooked for 10 minutes longer than I should have. The cherries weren’t too strong, but just enough to lift the bread, and the cream cheese filling only gave it a creamy texture, yum.

Recipe Links:

Cherry Compote

Lemon Braided Bread, instead of adding vanilla extract to the dough, I add almond extract instead. (As cherries and almonds go so well together).

Related posts:

1. Cherry and Almond Bread
2. Cherry and Almond Teabread
3. BBA: Artos – Greek Celebration Bread

Being the sensible sort of girl that I am I didn’t go for any of the sharing scorpian bowls of overproof rum set on fire. They were all out of scorpian bowls when we ordered…

I went for the much classier sounding Bombay & Elderflower, a mixture of gin, soda and elderflower cordial. I have been thinking about it on and off ever since.

As the sun was setting tonight, on what has been a reasonably warm and extremely busy day, I felt the need to kick off my shoes and relax on the sofa with a cool G&T.

I used 1 shot of Gin (Bombay Saphire), 1 shot of Elderflower cordial and topped up with slimline tonic water.

The only thing that could of made it better? A slice of lime…

Related posts:

1. Gin and Tonic Cocktail

As it tends to go slightly limp towards the end of the week, I decided to use it as much as possible this evening. Instead of making one of my typical chinese stir fries, I turned it in to more of a summery chinese-inspired salad. The strong flavours of the oil and the soy sauce help with the bitterness of the lettuce.

I have been making a basic salad like this for weeks now, with lettuce, tomatoes, and thinly peeled raw carrot. It works really well with a chinese dressing, normally we have it just on the side as part of a meal. But this time I decided to make chicken to go with the salad.

Related posts:

1. Summer Food: Tomato and Red Pepper Salad
2. Spice-rubbed Chicken with Orange and Pomegranate Salad
3. Asparagus Salad

Or at least this is exactly how i felt at 9 o’clock on Sunday morning when I woke up. Sunday’s are the days where you do the things you don’t have time for the rest of the week, just perfect for bread baking. On Sunday when I woke with a new zest for all things food, I flipped through the stuck together pages of the Bread Bakers Apprentice, but I saw nothing there that got me excited. On a side note while I love the BBA, it’s not for one of those days where you need to feel productive, so many of the recipes take two days before you actually get to eat!

Eventually I decided to go ahead with last months Fresh from the Oven challenge recipe of Turkish Pide, as I had been seeing so many pictures of the Turkish bread I was starting to regret not making the bread sooner. Plus it would be the perfect accompaniment to a lunchtime salad and dinnertime burgers. I “followed” Linda’s recipe – as it had UK measurements.

I have to say that I didn’t really follow the recipe, I used 3 cups of flour instead of 4, and I replaced the melted butter in the recipe with olive oil. Despite my changes the turkish pida turned out to be a wonderfully easy and tasty bread to make, and one that i will definitely make again. It was a heavy loaf so it was very filling – especially when halved and used in place of a burger bun.

I topped mine with a mixture of sea salt and cumin. Which went very well with my carrot salad (carrot and cumin seem to go so well together!)

Related posts:

1. Blackened Chinese Chicken Salad
2. What to do with a Kohlrabi
3. Tomato and Broad Bean Salsa

So for the past few days I have been trying my hardest to get out of this slump, with highly healthy fruit smoothies. Hoping that a boost in vitamins will help sort me out. I can’t say that it has really worked yet – last night a single glass of wine had me comatosed on the sofa for the rest of the evening.

But the main thing is that these are good for you, and since I have a huge number of vegetables to use from my box (my tiredness has also extended to not really wanting to cook) it’s a great way to use up leftovers.

My first attempt was a cheeky attempt to hide spinach in a beautifully purple blueberry smoothie. Matt didn’t even know what he was drinking until I tweeted about the added spinach – he had already finished by then

Then I went a bit over board and made a blueberry, apple, carrot and spinach smoothie, which wasn’t very smooth and was sort of like eating an entire meal. Not my best attempt.

Then I tried a strawberry, carrot and spinach smoothie. Which feels sort of wrong blending the strawberries carrots and yoghurt makes a beautiful pink coloured smoothie. Then you add in the spinach and it becomes an evil looking twin brother, flecked with green the final colour is more brown then anything else. You just have to drink it without looking too closely. It tastes wonderful, a little bit tart but I quite like it that way.

Now I am really sure you don’t really need a recipe for making smoothies, but for my favourite out of the above – blueberry and spinach smoothie, I used around a cup of frozen blueberries, a cup of spinach, a 1/4 cup of natural yoghurt and a 1/4 cup of water (or milk). Blend together the blueberries, yoghurt and water. Once blended add the spinach and blend again. Add more milk if you think it’s too thick – but I sort of like mine that way….

Related posts:

1. Lemon and Blueberry Muffins
2. Lemon and Blueberry Loaf Cake
3. Pineapple and Banana Enzyme Smoothies

This is most obvious by looking at what I made each of us for a birthday cake. I wanted a stunning three layer brightly coloured cake, lots of time, lots of effort, lots of stress and essentially (in this case) disappointment.

Matt however wanted… nothing, he wouldn’t be drawn on what he wanted at all as his birthday cake this year. For a while I thought about making a lemon torte, but I have tried umpteen different recipes and none of them worked, none of them were really even tasty. In the end I gave in to what he wanted which was the least stress option.

But no I couldn’t give in entirely, however I could opt for the less stress, minimal effort and tiny chance of failure option instead. This way I could relax which seems to be all he actually wanted.

So I did meet him half way between triple-layer-disaster-cake and nothing at all. I made him a simple trifle. I avoided the common pitfalls like deciding to make my own jelly, sponge and custard. Instead, shock horror, I bought them all in Tesco. The appeal of trifle for Matt I would guess is the simplicity and if I went around making raspberry and champagne jelly, topped with homemade sponge fingers and custard made-from-scratch – it just wouldn’t be the way he would like it. You know, the way you get trifle at christmas, it’s just a shame I couldn’t get those teeth-breaking-80s-silver-ball-things to really complete the look!

Despite not really liking Whisky I was surprised at how well it worked here as it kept the trifle from being way too sweet. If you still don’t want to use whisky for taste or the alcohol, I would try to use something with a strong but unsweetened taste. Coffee would actually be a great example (one which I am dying to try myself).

This trifle went down really well with Matt, it was pretty and tasty, I think we probably ate it too quickly in fact because the time between jelly setting and the trifle being eaten was only 20 minutes or so!

Related posts:

1. A Birthday Cake!
2. Coconut Oil Sponge Recipe
3. Empire Biscuits

A week ago or so I bought my first tub of buttermilk, despite not knowing what I was going to use it for. Since then I have spent time trawling for recipes but none of them really caught me. None of them made me want to get off the sofa (where I have generally relocated since getting the iPad) and actually make something. In the end I had a sudden craving for pancakes and it turned out to be a convenient way to use up the buttermilk, strawberries and creme fraiche I had in the fridge.

I really loved these as they were simple to make and contain no butter! So that made me at least feel healthier, especially when topped with heavily sugared strawberries. Hmmm healthy

I finished the pancakes off the next day with creme fraiche and frozen blueberries for lunch which was just as good if not better than the strawberries combination!

Related posts:

1. Sweet and Sour Pancakes
2. Lemon and Blueberry Muffins
3. Wholewheat Hot Cross Buns

So why oh why out of all the breads I could have chosen did I go for pizza?

It’s a good question and it seemed to make sense at the time, a few months ago after eating one too many Dominoes pizzas something snapped inside. I didn’t want to do this anymore, I wasn’t enjoying getting takeaway. Something about the heavy bases, too much cheese and never getting quite the perfect combination of toppings had ruined eating pizza for me.

It took a while to dawn on me that I could just make my own. While I love the healthy side to this Wholewheat pizza dough the overall pizza made from Peter Reinhart’s recipe for Pizza Napoletana in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is definitely the better of the two recipes.

This recipe should be made over two days. The first step is very quick and takes less than 20 minutes before popping the dough in the fridge. The second step includes the famous pizza toss, which is of course a requirement of the challenge Only kidding, I don’t want to drop my dough on the kitchen floor any more than you do, but if you feel up to it I’d love to see some action shots!

The recipe amounts make 6 9-12 inch pizzas, which I think is rather a lot, even if you can keep the dough in the fridge for 3 days or in the freezer for 3 months! I made a third of the recipe, which was enough for two perfectly sized individual pizzas. The amounts for 1/3 quantities are given in brackets.

• 4 1/2 cups or 20.25 ounces (6.75 ounces) of unbleached high-gluten bread flour
• 1 3/4 teaspoons or 0.44 ounces (0.14 ounces) of salt
• 1 teaspoon or 0.11 ounces (1/3 tsp) of instant yeast (if using active dry yeast you will need to increase this by 25%)
• 1/4 cup or 2 ounces (0.67 ounces) of olive or vegetable oil, optional
• 1 3/4 cups or 14 ounces (4.67 ounces) of ice cold water

While you don’t need any special equipment for this recipe (I don’t have any of the following) a pizza stone and peel may help with the final outcome. Oh and if you have an electric mixer with dough attachment that would be good – but if you don’t you can do it the old fashioned way, just like me!

Stir together the flour, salt and instant yeast in a large bowl. With a large metal spoon (I used a wooden spoon and it didn’t seem to make any difference) stir in the oil and water until all the flour is absorbed.

To do by hand, you need to stir with one hand and turn the bowl in the opposite direction with your other hand. You need to do this for 5 to 7 minutes, occasionally changing the direction as to really help develop the gluten. This method of mixing is actually quite a difficult task, sort of like rubbing your tummy while tapping your head, but as long as you are mixing the dough it should work out ok.

To do in a mixer, make sure you are using the dough hook attachment and mix on medium speed for 5 to 7 minutes.

Either way you mix you should end up with a smooth dough which is a little sticky. It should clear the sides of the bowl but not the bottom. If it isn’t clearing the sides then add a little more flour and mix again. If it clears the bottom then add a couple of drops of water, and mix again.

The finished dough should be springy, elastic and sticky but not tacky. If you use a thermometer it should register somewhere between 50 to 55 oF.

Now prepare a sheet pan with baking parchment and spray oil. Flour your counter and remove the dough on to the counter. Using a metal dough scraper (or your hands) create 6 equals sized pieces of dough. (I only made 2 using my 1/3 ingredients).

Flour your hands and shape each into a ball, if your hands stick add more flour and try again. Place each ball onto your sheet pan, spray each piece of dough with oil. Once all pieces of dough are on the tray, enclose it in a food-grade bag and pop it into the fridge.

Because I was only making a small quantity of dough, I didn’t use a tray at all, I just added each ball to a food-grade bag which I had sprayed the insides with oil. Then popped each bag into the fridge.

The next day a couple of hours before you want to cook them remove the dough from the fridge. Dust your counter with flour (and your hands) then spray oil on top. Place each ball on the counter and then gently press each into a flat disc about 1/2 inch thick. Top each with a little flour and oil and cover with another bag. Let rest for 2 hours.

At least 45 minutes before cooking put on your oven on at it’s maximum temperature (mine goes up to 250 oC, which worked ok) up to 800oF. If you have a baking stone put it in the oven now. If you don’t have a stone then you can use a normal baking sheet, just don’t preheat it first.

Now comes the tricky part to stretch out your dough, dust your peel or sheet pan with semolina flour or cornmeal. Coat your hands in flour including the backs and your knuckles. Gently lay the dough on to the top of your fists and carefully stretch it by bouncing the dough in a circular motion. As it starts to spread out you can move to the full toss method (flinging it above your head and hoping it doesn’t fall on the floor – good luck!). If it sticks to your hands at any point lay it out flat and redust your hands, continue stretching until it is the desired width.

With my dough I found it really hard to stretch my dough this way (as it kept tearing) so I stretched it gently on a well floured work surface. You can also roll it out using a rolling pin, but this isn’t quite such a good method for working with the dough.

Once you have reached the desired width place the stretched dough on the peel or baking sheet.

Now you can top it as you wish. I used a thin layer of tomato sauce, mozzarella, bacon and broccoli.

Now that your oven should have preheated, transfer the pizza to your oven. It should only take between 8 and 10 minutes to cook. You might want to turn it 180 degrees after 2 minutes, if you think it might over cook on one side.

And voila and you have one authentic Italian pizza dough!

Related posts:

1. Whole Wheat Pizza
2. Chocolate Buns : Fresh from the Oven
3. No Knead Bread – Fresh from the Oven

I have been thinking about making a pea risotto for a while, bright white rice studded with vivid green peas. As you can see however it didn’t quite work out as I intended…

The peas became dull and lost their brilliant green hue, I guess I cooked them too long. The idea of cooking the peas for longer was that more flavour from peas would come through – but that didn’t really work either.

Despite not working out as I wanted it was still a great meal, it’s just next time I will mash half the peas into the risotto at the start (to add flavour), and add the second half a couple of minutes before serving (all for the eyes and fresh taste).

I think risottos make a great spring dish, they are not too heavy and depending on the veggies (and how long you cook them) can taste fresh and green.

Recently I have been more busy adding features to the blog than actually doing any blogging. You might have noticed CommentLuv on the comments form recently, which allows you to link to a post on your blog, especially useful if you have posted something relevant recently.

I’m just experimenting so let me know whether you love or hate them

Related posts:

1. Pearl Barley Risotto – Orzotto
2. Low-fat Beetroot Risotto
3. Pumpkin Risotto

Who here actually eats the amount of fish you are supposed to? I know I don’t and when I do I am stuck in the Salmon, Tuna and Cod rut.

After reading about the similarities between trout and salmon, I gave one of my old salmon recipes a trout makeover.

This is a simple pasta dish with lemon and thyme grilled trout, with roasted tomatoes and onions to give a sweetness to the plain pasta.

This is another light spring fish dish, but with all the different steps it is maybe a little too much work for a weeknight meal. It could be made much simpler by topping the pasta with fresh tomatoes rather than the roasted tomatoes listed here… While the roasted tomatoes and onions give it a sweetness, I think this could be more than compensated for by fresh cherry tomatoes.

Related posts:

1. Summer Food: Tomato and Red Pepper Salad
2. Pesto Salmon with Gnocchi
3. Asparagus Salad