FacebookTwitterInstagramPinterest

80s Quick, Thrifty Cooking

Come with me into the raddest era and enjoy a super easy recipe that is a great tummy filler for those busy days!

We are heading into the year 1985 and diving into a Readers Digest cookbook of Quick, Thrifty Cooking. If the cover doesn’t bring back some nostalgia then nothing will. 😁

If you want a filling snack with lots of goodness then these High fibre muffins are the one for you!

We start off with the ingredients list:

2 cups unsifted plain flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Baking soda

1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats (the fine ones)

1 cup of Whole bran cereal/Bran or Wheat Germ (I used wheat germ as that’s what I had in the cupboard, the quicker the better)

1/2 cup Raisins or for that extra fibre boost – Prunes!

2 Eggs lightly beaten

1/2 cup Golden Syrup

 

The tag line for these is “These muffins are full of flavour, high in fibre, B vitamins, protein and minerals” (Perfect if you need a bit of regulating 😁).

Only two bowls to dirty and two to wash, easy as.  The oven gets popped on at 180C and I combined  all of the dry ingredients in a big bowl.  The smaller bowl gets the eggs, buttermilk and golden syrup. Remember if you don’t have buttermilk just use regular with a teaspoon of lemon juice or white vinegar stirred in and left for 5 minutes.

Pop the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients in the larger bowl and make sure that it is all slowly mixed in, sometime you need to watch out for those little pockets of flour. 😉

Spoon the batter into patty pans lined with patty cases (cupcake cases for those young ‘uns). Making sure they are about 2/3 full.

Bake then in your preheated oven, I had to do two trays as I used the smaller size, for 15-20 minutes until they are ‘Clean toothpick’ cooked through.

I urge you to give these a go as they are a great tummy filler, channel your 80s housewife and let me know what you think below. ❤️

See you back here for more retro recipies next time.  Stay rad! ❤️

 

2023-07-12T13:50:15+12:0012 July 2023|80s cookbook, Bakes, History, Kiwi bakes, Muffins, Readers Digest|0 Comments

Ginger Kisses

If you grew up with these you will know how gorgeous light and warming they are to eat, and you know how hard it is to restrict yourself to just one of these beauties!

Ginger kisses are a traditional kiwi treat and once you bite into that pillowy ginger goodness you won’t want to leave.

Here is the ingredients list for today’s traditional bake:

2 cups/260g plain flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3 heaped tsp ground ginger

1 level tsp baking soda

¾ cup/160g caster sugar

110g salted butter, softened

¼ cup/90g golden syrup

1 large egg

¼ cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 

We start by sifting the first 4 ingredients in a bowl and set it aside to cream the next 3 ingredients in another bowl.  Once combining those you will add the rest of the ingredients to the creamed mixture.

Heres were you combine the two to make the magic happen, folding in ever so carefully because you don’t want kisses you can bounce off the floor or knock someone out with. 😄

Your oven goes onto the usual 180 C and line your trays with baking paper – I used two as they spread when they cook.

Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto the sheets spaced a little apart to allow for spreading. It’s best to bake them one sheet at a time to allow for even cooking.

Once you room is filled with the gorgeous smell and they are lovely and golden (10-12 minutes) take them out and cool.

Then comes the magic!
I have chosen a buttercream to sandwich them together but if you are going to eat them all in one day feel free to fill with whipped cream.

Here are the ingredients for the buttercream;

60g salted butter

1 cup icing sugar

2 Tsp golden syrup
(feel free to add ground ginger to this if you want an extra kick)

Milk to mix

Place or pipe (if you’re feeling fancy) as much buttercream as you desire onto the base of one kiss and pop another one on top pushing gently to sandwich them together.

Try baking them for yourself and you will agree homemade is best, you also get the added bonus of filling your house with delicious smells for the day. 😊

Thanks for coming back to my blog and I hope to see you here again soon. 💕

2023-06-28T13:05:18+12:0028 June 2023|Bakes, Edmonds Cookbook, History, Kiwi bakes, Vintage cookbook, Vintage Kitchen|0 Comments

Caramel Crunch Fingers

Heading on back to the Girl Guides for the yummiest of treats!

We will start with a foreword from Heather Gunn (Northland Provincial Commissioner):

This book of recipes has been compiled by members of the Northland Girl Guides Association to raise funds for their provincial Camp-site Trefoil Park.

Trefoil park is situated in the centre of Northland. It is being developed to provide camping facilities for Girl Guides and other youth groups.

We hope you will enjoy using “Trefoil Treats” and that it will be a useful addition to your Cookery Book drawer.

Good luck and good eating.

 

This time I chose a recipe which I hadn’t cooked before, just to see if it would become a favourite in our household…and I’m a bit partial to caramel. 😁

INGREDIENTS INCLUDE:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup cornflakes

1/2 cup walnuts (most nuts would be good though)

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup coconut

1tsp baking powder

5oz butter

 

I did a little bit of improvising in order to avoid going out to the supermarket AGAIN and swapped the walnuts out for some almonds and peanuts which I had in my little pantry, I chopped them up a bit too. I encourage everyone to experiment with different types and see where the wind takes them. 😁

Everything goes into the mixing bowl (my kind of recipe), apart from the butter which gets melted and then added. One bowl! Bliss when it comes to washing up!

Stir the butter in and pop the mixture into a rectangular/square baking pan. I used my pretty pink snowflake Pyrex for this one.

Bake in your oven at 350 F for 20-30 minutes (I went for the maximum on this one) and boom your slice is cooked!

Now for the fun bit – and no waiting around for it to cool either – you can ice it while it’s still warm, yay!

Pop 3oz butter, 2 Tbsp brown sugar and 2 Tbsp milk into a small saucepan and bring to boil for 2 minutes. Mmmmmm, ‘enter caramel smells here’. 🤤 The recipe gives a general “add icing sugar to correct consistency” – I think I added 1 2/3 cup for my liking but here again it’s really up to you.

Pour it over the slice and add some more chopped nuts or coconut and bob’s your uncle. 😁

You will need to wait for this to set so cue dance party while you’re waiting. 🥳

It’s is well worth the wait, leave a note for me if you enjoyed this recipe. I would love to hear from you.

Until next time!

Sweet Sensations NZ 💕

2023-06-09T13:24:52+12:009 June 2023|Bakes, Coconut, Girl Guide cookbook, History, Kiwi bakes, Vintage cookbook, Vintage Kitchen|0 Comments

Mrs Beeton’s Adventures – Breads

Welcome back to my lovely readers, I thought I might go in a different direction this week, from my usual sweet bakes.

I don’t think you could find many out there that don’t love one of these delicious beauties heated with butter and lashings of golden syrup. Yes today I’m heading into the wonderful world of the golden crumpet!

The glorious crumpet is said to have originated in Wales and the earliest recipe was written way back in 1769. Originally cooked on a iron griddle pan over an open fire, which you will be relieved to know I won’t be attempting today. 😁 No need to ring the fire brigade, lol.

I started out with a quart of milk warmed, this is rather a lot so make sure you have plenty left over for your accompanying cuppa. A quart is equal to 4 cups or 1 litre of liquid. I then added 1/2tsp of salt and 1 1/2 ounces of yeast and stirred that up to froth. This recipe doesn’t actually give any quantities other than the milk so I used a bit of previous knowledge of breads and a bit of good luck.

When adding the flour you need to make sure the dough is more like a batter than a dough, so more on the pouring scale. Then I exercised a bit of patience, yes I know, I’m learning. 😁 Leaving it to sit for at least half an hour to rise and get all ‘bubbly’ (the technical term).

Now make sure you have more than one crumpet ring or you will be stood at the cooktop until your legs give way (gained from experience 😁). Spray oil is a fantastic invention to grease the rings before filling with batter, making them much easier to remove.

I cooked them in a hot pan until they were golden on both sides. When you flip over with a spatula you may get some oosing of batter, no problem, just push the ring down and this gets chopped off so they are all evenly round.

If you manage to wait until they are all cooked you can heat or toast them, or you can eat them deliciously hot off the stovetop with a cute little butter pat and some golden or maple syrup.

Please don’t forget to let me know how you get on with your crumpet adventure and don’t forget to tune in for more Mrs Beeton’s adventures!

 

2022-03-23T13:13:38+13:0023 March 2022|Bakes, Breads, History, Mrs Beeton's Cookbook, Vintage Kitchen|0 Comments

Mrs Beeton’s Preserves – Part 1

Summer Preserving

While away on our much needed summer holiday early this year we discovered an amazing little secondhand bookshop in Whitianga, where I stumbled upon an updated copy of Mrs Beeton’s Preserves.

I was excited to get this home and try something out and it just happened to be the time for a bumper season of sweetcorn from our very own backyard vege patch.

Going straight to the pickles and relish section of the book I found the perfect recipe for Sweetcorn Relish. One of my favourite things to eat is cheese and relish so I was really looking forward to sampling it.

This is a two day process so keep this in mind when setting aside some time to make this at home.

Bear with me while I list the ingredients for you as there are a few, but all are readily available summer veges which, if you make them at the right time of year, won’t cost you much for the amount that the recipe makes.

2 Green peppers, seeded and diced (I used red)

2 Large Carrots diced

2 Large Onions diced

6 Celery Sticks diced

2 Garlic cloves crushed

1tsp Mustard powder

1tsp Turmeric

1Tbsp Cornflour

1 Pint white vinegar

900g Sweetcorn kernels (I cut these straight off the cobs)

100g Sugar

All of the veges go into a large bowl (minus the corn) in layers, with salt sprinkled over each layer. Sprinkle some more salt over the top  and cover the bowl to stand overnight.

Before you start making the relish the next day make sure you bring your clean jars to boil on the stovetop in a large pot of water and dry them out in a moderate oven to sterilise. You don’t want to put hot relish into cold jars, or the other way around as this will cause them to crack.

The next day you will need to start with draining and rinsing the veges twice before putting them into a large saucepan with most of the white vinegar (keep aside a tablespoon to mix with the spices).  White vinegar is not expensive and it is great to have extra in the cupboard for cleaning purposes too. A pretty handy ingredient to have on hand that’s for sure.

The mustard, turmeric and cornflour are mixed in a cup with the extra bit of vinegar you put aside. Don’t add this to the pan just now as it doesn’t go in until later.

Everything is heated in 5 minute sections so it’s pretty simple to remember. Firstly bring the veges to the boil and simmer for your first 5 minutes. Add the 900g (!) of sweetcorn and cook for another 5 minutes. Stir in your sugar and cook for….you guessed it..another 5 minutes.

Lastly add the spice paste you made earlier and 1tsp Salt and stir well, this comes to the boil and simmers for your last 5 minute blast.

Take your jars out of the oven and pour the relish evenly into them and seal (with a clean towel over the lid, so you don’t burn your hands). Once they cool a bit make sure you label them with the date, these babies will keep for 6-9 months so that’s plenty of time to demolish the lot 😄. I got 7 decent sized jars out of this mixture so if you are feeling generous, there are even some to gift to friends and family.

It’s a fairly straight forward recipe to try which doesn’t require any fiddly setting temperatures as does Jam, so I would recommend this one for beginners who want to get into making their own preserves.

I hope you enjoy making this as much as I did and come back again for my delicious vintage cooking!

2022-03-06T12:47:26+13:006 March 2022|History, Mrs Beeton's Cookbook, Preserves, Relish, Vintage Kitchen|0 Comments

Mrs Beeton’s Adventure – Strawberry Drops

After a break from our regularly scheduled programme, I am back again with another adventure into the great Mrs Beeton’s cookbook. 😄

As a celebration for retaining our sanity through a very loooooooooong lockdown, I thought it was time for a special treat! I think we all deserve one, so here goes….

I guide you to the very sweet section of ‘Confectionery and Ices’ of this lovely old cookbook and very summery sounding (and smelling, it turns out) Sweet drop. Now this recipe is called Strawberry drops but the caption says that you could use any fruit you desire. Let your imagination run wild people!

I decided to stick to the original plan and make these with my family’s favourite summer fruit – Strawberries. 🍓

The recipe ingredients are pretty concise and you will only need 1/2lb of finely powdered sugar (icing sugar), 1/2 pint of the juice of your chosen fruit (pulp) and 2 egg whites. Should be a super quick treat right? Sounds perfect!

I started by whizzing my fresh strawbs in the food processor and straining then again through a sieve so that I had a smooth as silk ‘juice’. Then all you need to do is whip the egg whites into stiff peaks and fold the three ingredients together. If you are no stranger to cooking you may be taking a look at your mixture right now and thinking it’s pretty much like a flavoured meringue, right?!

It pretty much is, and the smell of the fresh fruit is divine! You may want to make these in all different flavours just to have this smell in your house 24/7. 😄

So I got my lovely piping bag out and fitted it with a pretty nozzle and spooned the mixture into my bag ready to pipe some teeny drops onto my baking tray. Making sure I had lined multiple baking trays with paper (cause it makes heeaps!) I went ahead and piped them out.

Now the recipe only says to ‘bake in a very cool oven’, so I needed to call on my previous meringue knowledge for this one. I set my oven to 120 degrees Celsius and baked them for around an hour, It ended up a very long dance party time today as it made 4 trays of mini ‘drops’

All that was left now was to plate up a dainty plate of drops and ration myself to a few at a time. 😄 These are great for decorating cakes and desserts and the natural fruit flavour is better than a processed sweet any day. Don’t be scared to try making homemade sweets and candies, they will be so much better for you than the store bought kind.

In my YouTube video I include an excerpt from Mrs Beeton encouraging you to do just this. 😁

I hope you enjoyed this quick bake, let me know below if you would like to read about more sweets from this cookbook. Check out my YouTube video below for a follow along tutorial.

Hope to see you back again with my next instalment. 💕

2021-11-10T08:55:03+13:006 October 2021|Bakes, History, Mrs Beeton's Cookbook|0 Comments

Classic Kiwi Baking – Eclairs

Hey there,

It’s another week in Level 4 for us Aucklanders so it was time to do something a bit different and break out into the good old classic kiwi bake. What better place to do that than with a classic kiwi cookbook – The Edmonds cookbook. 😁. Hopefully, most of you kiwis have this in your cupboard, so why not get it out and bake along with us!

Yes! So I have a helper for this bake…my 11-year-old son. That’s right folks, let’s teach our boys how to cook too, it’s not just a girly ‘sport.’ 😁. He has been helping me in the kitchen a lot this lockdown and is getting pretty good at it. Today I let him pick and he chose something I’m sure most of you know and love – Chocolate Eclairs. ❤️

We started out getting all our ingredients together on the benchtop and measuring them ready to go. The recipe calls for 75g butter, 1 cup water, 1 cup plain flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence, 3 eggs, Chocolate Icing (icing sugar, cocoa, water + butter) and some delicious fresh whipped cream.

Just a note folks, that it will take some strength and a decent piping bag to pipe these beauties onto the baking sheet, so get pumping iron. 😁

My helper and I started off with the butter and water in a saucepan and heated it on the stovetop until the butter had melted and the mixture was bubbling. Here’s where you have to work fast – straight after you have tipped your flour into the butter/water mixture you will need to use those muscles to stir vigorously until the mixture comes together and away from the sides of the pot.

We then turned off our element and brought the pot over to our bench to add the sugar and vanilla essence. After incorporating this we added the eggs one at a time (using a go between bowl just to double check there was no shell going on in too). This mixture may look a bit weird and is pretty tough to combine, if you have trouble mixing the eggs in pop it in your mixture for a quick burl, works wonders!

It doesn’t look very pretty yet but there’s more work to be done! It will be delicious, I promise.

Fill your large piping bag with any large nozzle you fancy and pipelines of around 7cm onto the baking sheet. A trick to get the pastry to disconnect from the nozzle is to cut it off with a pair of scissors or a sharp knife.

Here we have several lovely caterpillars lined up on our tray. 😁 We used two trays to fit them all in. Then in they went to our trusty oven at 200 degrees Celsius for around 25 minutes. The bigger your eclairs the longer they should be in the oven (We made cute minis – the smaller they are the fewer calories, right? 😂).

After the timer went off we took them out, nice and golden brown, to cool. Then with a sharp knife, we cut a slit in the slides the length of the eclair. If you have large eclairs and need them to dry out inside, then cut the slit earlier and leave to dry.

We whipped our cream to soft peaks and made some really easy chocolate icing with a cup of icing sugar, a tablespoon of cocoa and a tablespoon of butter, with water to mix until we were happy with the consistency. Then we got out a piping bag with a smaller nozzle and piped that delicious cream inside the eclair, and iced the top with our chocolatey good Icing.

And there was only one thing left to do, which was to enjoy the tasty treats – Fresh is best people! ❤️

I hope you all get a chance to do some baking with your family, it really is a very special time, and something they will take with them for the rest of their lives. ❤️

2021-11-10T08:55:03+13:0018 September 2021|Bakes, Edmonds Cookbook, History|0 Comments

Mrs Beeton’s Adventure – Roly-Poly Jam Pudding

Welcome back to my next instalment of Mrs Beeton’s adventures, and here in NZ right now I thought everyone could do with a comfort food bake. ❤. Lets be swept away, come join me on my next adventure into the vintage baking world…..

Many of you may have made or eaten versions of this bake during your childhood and I think it’s lovely to bring back those memories by baking something with love. Today’s journey takes us into the world of pastry and puddings where we are going to be making a Roly-Poly Jam Pudding. 😁

Now this one is a three parter as I could not leave out the thing which makes this pudding extra nostalgic, but first things first I gathered the ingredients together for the pastry and jam pudding on my benchtop and set to work.

There are only two ingredients in Jam Roly poly but the first is suet crust which I needed to make from scratch beforehand. Suet crust includes flour, beef suet and water, now I couldn’t get hold of beef suet, so after consulting Mr google I decided to use shortening instead. If using beef suet the instructions are to ‘free the suet from the skin and shred, then chopping up extremely fine, rub into your flour‘. As I was using fridge cold shortening I used my old trick and grated it into the flour to give a fine consistency when rubbing in. For every pound of flour you will need 5/6 ounces of suet (or shortening) and then mix in 1/2 pint of water.

After mixing it by hand or in my case, my trusty Kenwood mixer it should look something like this…

Mrs Beeton explains that if you would like to go for a richer pasty you can use 1/2 to 3/4 pound of suet to every pound of flour. And if you are feeling extra energetic on the day, why not pound the suet in a mortar with a little butter and lay it on the pastry in small pieces as you would do for a puff pastry.

My workout today was the rolling of the pastry on my baking board, to around 1/2 inch thick. I think that’s plenty for one day, don’tcha think. 😁 Then the fun part was lathering the pastry with my homemade rhubarb and strawberry jam, the recipe calls for 3/4 pound but I say why not go wild!

Then you know what to do….roll it all up into a big sausage. I laid it on some floured calico I had, rolled that up around it and tied the ends up like a Christmas cracker. 😁

Mrs Beeton says to put the pudding into boiling water and boil for 2 hours. As I didn’t have any pot big enough for that feat I made a makeshift water bath and put my trusty oven to the test, at 180 degrees Celsius. Because the water evaporates you will need to keep an eye on it and top up when necessary.

Here are my Macgyver skills in action. 😂

While that was cooking happily away I got to thinking….What jam Roly poly is complete without the addition of some glorious custard. Why not go the whole hog people, it wouldn’t be the same without it. ❤️

Waddya know, there was a recipe for Boiled custard just a few pages along. This custard needed a pint of milk, 3 eggs, 3 oz sugar and flavouring of whatever your hearts desire. Mrs Beeton suggests bay leaves, lemons rind or vanilla extract, and a cheeky tablespoon of brandy to finish it off.

The milk gets popped into the saucepan with the sugar and flavouring and ‘steeped by the side of the fire until well flavoured’. I chose a low setting on my stovetop for this. The flavourings get taken out with straining the milk and then you will need to cook down the milk a little before stirring in the whisked eggs (you don’t want scrambled eggs in your custard, trust me).

There is a very lengthy description of what to do if you would like a richer custard, of which some are using 2 duck eggs, cream instead of milk, and doubling the eggs using only the yolks. The pot goes back on the heat and stir it ‘only one direction’ until it thickens. A very important point in italics is on no account allow it to reach boiling point, in other words have patience (if you can). The brandy is added after it is taken off the stovetop if you so desire and nutmeg grated on top. 😁

Violà! Delicious custard! 🤤

All that was left to do was remove the pudding from my oven and wait patiently for it to cool a little to avoid burning my fingers.

Cutting it into slices and putting 2 in my bowl (no judgment please 😁), I poured a healthy amount of custard and sat down to enjoy.

I hope you enjoyed this bake as much as I did, don’t forget to let me know if you’ve tried it by commenting below. Remember if you would like a follow-along video that will be up on my YouTube channel soon.

Til next time lovely readers ❤️ Bon Apetit!

2021-11-10T09:04:25+13:0027 August 2021|Bakes, Cakes, History, Makes, Mrs Beeton's Cookbook|0 Comments

Mrs Beeton’s Adventure – Succotash

Welcome back all you lovely readers, today I feel like a bit of a change so we are heading into the ‘Vegetarianism’ section of Mrs Beeton’s cookbook.

If you are an avid meat eater don’t be put off today by the topic, a good steak always looks great with a side of yummy veges. 😉

If you are an 80’s kid like me, you will have grown up with Saturday cartoons and no doubt be familiar with Sylvester or Daffy giving a good old “Sufferin’ succotash” every now and then. If like me, you have always wondered exactly what succotash was, you are in for a treat. 😁

According to good old Mr Google, Succotash is ‘broken corn kernels’ and originated from the United States and Canada. My favourite toons use it as an expression of frustration and I think it’s pretty cool. So why not cook up the recipe courtesy of Mrs Beeton and see how it tastes!

We start off with Lima or String beans, green corn (I used regular old yellow corn as that’s all I could find – I think you can even use a mix of beans and corn to spice it up a bit), milk, butter, pepper and salt. Pretty simple list of ingredients don’tcha think? Should be a pretty short and sweet cook! Never judge a book by its cover, 😄 the cooking time is looooong!

I recommend cooking this while you have your meat cooking, especially good with a bbq or your favourite roast. She starts by instructing us to shell the beans or if using string beans, cut them into pieces. I topped and tailed mine and chopped them into 2cm sized pieces to put into my pot. You will need to either use whole kernel corn or remove it from the cob, making sure you have a third more corn than beans. The beans go into the saucepan of boiling water and keep them simmering away for 20 minutes on your stovetop.

It’s a good idea to have a strainer on standby as there is a lot of straining in this recipe. I then drained the beans and added the corn to the saucepan with the beans. Just enough boiling water to cover goes into the pot with a little salt and back on the stovetop for another 30 minutes, and we are getting there….but wait there’s more! We then strain off most, but not all, of the water and substitute it for your milk which has been patiently waiting. Adding butter (it doesn’t say how much so I made a guess and added 1 1/2 tablespoons), salt and pepper to taste. And on again to Mr Stovetop for another 10 minutes (I put it on low heat for this bit).

Taking it off the heat I plated it up onto my Crown Lynn (as I felt a vintage cook deserved vintage plating 😁), along with my roast chicken legs which had been happily cooking away in my oven.

There you have it! It’s not a tricky recipe but it is time-consuming. The instructions are to serve ‘very hot’ and it is seasonable from July to October. I think if you can get hold of beans and corn year-round from your local supermarket you can pretty much have this at any time of year.

Bon appetit my lovely readers!

A video of the cook it is up to view on my YouTube channel at: https://youtu.be/vAzOlaQ3Dlg

Please check out my other blog posts if you haven’t already and my Sweet Sensations NZ YouTube channel for videos of my lovely vintage cooks and bakes 💕 See you again soon!

2021-11-10T08:55:03+13:0029 July 2021|History, Mrs Beeton's Cookbook|0 Comments

Mrs Beeton’s Adventure – Common Cake

It was an easy decision to go with another bake again this time, as I loved the last recipe. So turning to the “Breads, Buns, Cakes” section I scanned through and found one that caught my eye…Common Cake 😃

Although this combination of spices does not make a ‘common cake‘ in today’s times, it was common for these to be used back when this cookbook was created “1906” when their bakes may have been done in a range something like this advertisement (featuring in the front of #MrsBeetons cookbook).

Caraway gives this bread a slightly anise or liquorice flavour and was a sought after flavour in British baking, dating back from the 1700s and through Victorian times.

Now that our mini history lesson is complete let’s get back to our recipe bake, shall we? 😃

The Common cake includes a note in its title mentioning that this bake is ‘suitable for sending to Children at school’, of which I have plenty, so it seemed right up my alley. 🤣 Here are the ingredients laid out on my benchtop ready to go.

We have flour, butter (or clarified dripping), caraway seeds, allspice, pounded sugar, currants, milk and yeast.

Now the recipe starts off like a scone mixture and quickly segue into a bread. After rubbing the butter into the flour with a little cheat I learned at High School cooking class (grating it in makes it easier to rub in smaller amounts – you’re welcome if you didn’t already have that titbit stored. 😉) Alternatively you can use one of these nifty little pastry blender thingmys.. (or your good old hands)

I warmed the milk in my super quick non-vintage Microwave and stirred in the yeast. It didn’t mention leaving the yeast to froth for 10 minutes but I did it anyway, as with other breads I’ve made in the past.

I then added the milk into the flour with the other dry ingredients and mixed to a dough with the dough hook on my Kenwood mixer (saving my tired arms, lol). Add in the currants and mix some more until it was nice and shiny.

I had to divide this into around a third (one larger tin) and then the remaining 2/3 I cut into 4 smaller ‘buns’ for my cute little #JamieOliver springform tins.
She says to line the cakes ‘with strips of buttered paper about 6 inches higher than the top of the tin’ and I then put the separated dough balls into the 5 tins.

Now we play the waiting game as I waited for them to rise for ‘more than an hour’ (dance party time 🥳).

The instructions for baking once again don’t give any specific temperature but do say I needed a ‘well-heated oven’ and ‘1 1/2 to 2 hours baking’ time.

I put mine onto good 180 degrees celsius again just to be on the safe side with my oven.

The smell filling the room was gorgeous and they rose a bit, maybe 6 inches brown paper lining was a bit of an overkill, but they rose above the tin edges nonetheless.

The resulting breads were pretty impressive and reminded me of panettone in looks. Those lovers of caraway had a wee taste of my mini buns and I had rave reviews.

Mrs Beeton mentions that the time taken to make the common cake is 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 hours. The average cost being 1s. 4d. and is sufficient to make 2 moderate-sized cakes.

I hope you enjoyed this bake as much as I did and remember there will be a YouTube video to watch at:

Thank you so much for coming back again to my blog and welcome to any new readers! Hope to see you here next time😁 Cheerio!

2021-11-10T08:55:03+13:0026 June 2021|Cakes, History, Mrs Beeton's Cookbook|0 Comments
Go to Top