Date spread

We had the most wonderful date spread at A Naestu Grosum in Reykjavik, three years ago. I remembered it when I saw this recipe, also remembered a packet of dates I'd had in the cupboard for a while. Had been eating dates at Grandma's and thinking about how much I like them. This all seemed very seasonally appropriate, somehow.

(made a half quantity, used pretty much a whole packet of dates (apart from a few that went in my mouth... it was plenty - it's quite rich)

2 1/2 cups dates, pitted and chopped
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 cups water
1 tbsp lemon zest
2 tbsp ginger, grated
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried red pepper flakes
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp cocoa

Put all the ingredients in a small pan and simmer until almost all of the water is evaporated (about 30 minutes).

Remove from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. Puree until smooth. Eat warm or cold, with seedy bread or raw veg.

Mum's 'Red Dragon' bean pie

This is sort of a veg shepherd's pie. Grandma looked out the recipe while I was in Edinburgh and made it for me. She had got the recipe from Mum. In fact, as she looked through her recipe folders she found that she had got the recipe from Mum twice: she had two different copies, both handwritten by Mum. Seeing Mum's handwriting is one of those things that makes her seem so near yet so far - I remember tearing out and keeping all these little bits of paper where she'd signed my schoolwork: I didn't want to forget what her writing looked like, same as I didn't want to forget anything else about her.

The pie was really tasty - a bit 70s perhaps, but lovely. Grandma gave me one copy of the recipe and I've brought it back with me: I made it for S today (with black eyed beans) and he liked it.

For filling:
4 oz aduki beans (or similar)
2 oz wheat grain or rice (used rice)
1 onion, chopped
8 oz grated carrot (used about 5 medium-small ones)
1-2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp mixed herbs (used mix of oregano, basil, thyme)
1/2 pint bean stock
salt+pepper

For topping:
~4 medium potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed with
-marg, olive oil, fake milk, salt+pepper to taste

Soak the beans overnight, then cook. Cook the rice. Cook the potatoes separately, then mash with oil/marg, milk, salt+pepper (we used a mixture of potato and celeriac and it was yum).

Fry the onion and carrot. Add the rest of the filling ingredients to the onion and carrot and simmer until thickened.

Put the filling in an ovenproof dish, top with the mashed potato, and bake in a 400F oven for 20-30 min until the top of the mashed potato has started to brown and the filling is bubbling.

Note: I followed the recipe fairly approximately - used ingredients as above but just guessed quantities.

Rye and honey soda bread

I've come across a few recipes featuring rye flour recently but have never owned any. Today I stopped by the Russian store and bought a bag (I also found some 00 flour and got confused thinking it was the right one for pasta, ah well it should be good for pizza though).

I was thinking about making soda bread (it's so lovely and quick compared to yeasted bread, and I wanted some bread in the freezer), and this recipe seemed like a great idea: both rye and soda.

250g light rye flour, plus a little extra for dusting
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
20g each sunflower, sesame, poppy and linseeds (or 80g seedy mix of your choice)
100ml plain yoghurt (used 200ml soy milk plus 1 tsp cider vinegar instead of yoghurt+milk)
100ml whole milk
50g runny honey
1 tbsp rapeseed oil, plus extra for greasing (used olive oil)

Heat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Grease a baking tray and dust lightly with flour. In a bowl, mix the flour, bicarb, salt and seeds. In a jug, whisk the milk+vinegar, honey and oil, then pour into the dry ingredients and mix quickly but thoroughly to form a very sticky dough.

Scoop the dough on to the tray – you may find it easier to scrape it out with a spatula – and form it into a rough round about 7-8cm high. Don't worry if it's a bit of a sticky mess – it'll sort itself out in the oven. Dust with rye flour, cut a deep cross in the top – go at least halfway through – and bake for 25-30 minutes until risen and golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. It's best eaten within 24 hours, though it will freeze well, too.


The rye does not have as distinct a taste as I was expecting but it's a nice-tasting, brown soda bread.

Nerf-day cake for Jamie (age 12)

I just got back from two weeks in Scotland. My cousin Jamie turned 12 while I was there (he's a millenium baby so it's easy to keep track of his age). For his birthday he and his dad (my uncle) had planned a party involving five or six of J's mates and a Nerf gun battle. Nerf guns are colourful plastic guns of all descriptions that fire three inch long orange foam pellets. They are very popular with little boys - Jamie has been into them for years. As he told it, this was his last big Nerf gun blow-out - he felt like he was getting too old for them.

I had plans to go out to East Lothian and hang out with all my sisters and their babies on the day of the party, but got thinking about what to get Jamie for his birthday and then thought of making a cake. I'm not often there on his birthday and I had plenty of time since I was on holiday (I love baking when I have time for it): it seemed like it could be fun for me and save his parents some bother. I don't know much about what 12 year old boys like, but started with the Nerf theme and the idea of a making a target popped up. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be coming together into a great idea, so I went with it.

I used my Grandma's kitchen and she helped me with the recipes, so these are not vegan since I a) wasn't making it for anyone veg, and b) didn't want to freak Grandma out with a weird recipe - the cake plan was already pretty far out for her...

Preparatory sketches

For the cake (Grandma's basic Victoria sponge recipe, plus red):
2 eggs
4 oz self raising flour
4 oz caster sugar
4 oz margarine / soft butter
1 tsp baking powder
2-3 tsp red food colouring

For the buttercream filling (Grandma's recipe):
1 tbsp water
1/2 oz caster sugar
1/2 oz butter
4 oz icing sugar

For decorating / finishing:
~10 glace cherries, chopped
~4 tbsp plum jam, warmed and strained
1 packet white ready to roll fondant icing
1-2 tsp red food colouring
1 Nerf gun pellet
red food writing pen

First, make the cake. Heat the oven to 170C. Grease two 8 in sandwich cake tins and line the bases with paper. Sieve the flour and baking powder together into a bowl, then add all the other ingredients and beat until well combined - either by hand or in a food processor (I don't have a food processor at home but for this I got to use Grandma's - it's a Kenwood dating from the 50s and it is amazing. One day perhaps I'll have one of my own, it feels like a 50s housewifely dream using it). Divide the mixture (which should be intensely red) evenly between the two prepared tins and bake for 20 min / until they are starting to come away from the sides of the tins. Let sit for 10 min or so then turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool.

While the cakes are cooking, make the buttercream filling. Put the butter, water and caster sugar in a small pan and heat until the sugar is dissolved and the butter melted. Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl. Add the liquid mix to the icing sugar and beat together til smooth. Allow to come to room temperature, when it should be a good spreading consistency.

When the cakes are cool, trim any rough bits from the edges and peel off the base papers. Spread half the buttercream on one side of one of the cakes, and the other half on one side of the other cake.  Set one icing-up on a plate and sprinkle the chopped glace cherries over it. Put the other cake icing-down neatly on top.

Take a lump of rolling icing about the size of a clementine and put it aside in a small bowl. Roll out the remaining rolling icing (about 5/6 of the packet) on a piece of clingfilm until big enough to cover the top and sides of the cake in one sheet (take care to avoid red cake crumbs or food colouring when doing this). Brush the top and sides of the cake with the warmed, sieved plum jam. Carefully lift the sheet of icing and place it, centred, on top of the cake. Gently smooth it down over the sides of the cake and neatly trim any excess.

Take the set aside icing and fold in red food colouring until it is bright red (about 1 tsp) - I used a spoon to knead and fold until the colour was evenly distributed to try and avoid staining my hands. Roll or squish out a circle approx. 2 in diameter and press this in place in the middle of the cake (might have been a good idea to stick it on with the sieved jam). Roll out a sausage and flatten it to make a ring about 1 cm across that will fit around the perimeter of the cake. Place this on in the same way as the central circle. Make a second ring that fits in the middle, equidistant between the outer ring and the inner circle, and place this as well. The cake should now look very much like a target.

Press the end of the Nerf pellet into the icing in a few positions to make small circular indentations. Use these as guides to carefully cut circles out of the white icing, exposing the red cake underneath. Cut a hole in the icing in the centre of the central circle (bullseye!) just big enough to fit the Nerf pellet and then push the (clean) Nerf pellet into the hole, business end first, so it is sticking out of the cake at a jaunty angle.

Use the writing pen (I saw this in a cake shop down the road for Grandma's and was curious to try it - it looks just like a felt tip pen but writes with food colouring) to write a message along one of the white strips in the target... the Nerf-day pun occurred to me and I couldn't let it go, especially since the party wasn't on Jamie's actual birthday (a couple of days later on a weekday), so the cake really was for his 'Nerf-day'.

Finally, we used balls of the left-over rolling icing to stick the candles in and pressed them in place on the plate around the edges of the cake.


I was pretty pleased with this. It was a fun project, and fun to combine Grandma's recipes with my ideas and things I thought 12 year old boys would be into. The rolling icing was really fun and easy to work with (and appears to be vegan). It gives a  resilient finish - butter icing is so sensitive to accidental touching or changes in temperature, this stuff is robust. I was worried all the way through that the red would come out pink, which is one reason why I used so much food colouring. I'm glad I did, as it was quite high-impact, but using another colour would also work, and perhaps you could then use less. I really liked Grandma's buttercream recipe: a clever way to make a lighter buttercream / avoid having to use loads of butter.

As soon as J saw it he took photos and told me he was posting it on Instagram, which I figured was probably as good a thumbs-up as I could hope for (although he then proceeded to explain to me what Instagram is, I guess he sees me as hopelessly old and uncool even if he did think the cake was cool). Since I missed the party I didn't see the reaction, but Simon (J's dad / my uncle) said the red cake inside was a great surprise and it was all gone by the time I got back so I'll have to assume it looked and tasted good when cut!

Squash wedges with cumin, cinnamon, sage and garlic

Couldn't resist the prettiest pile of Orange Acorn and Delicata (variegated orange / cream / green) squashes being put out at Trader Joes when I went there on Friday (ahem supposedly looking for chocolates to decorate a cake ahem). I thought I should be so over squash by now, but no...

Decided to roast them right away, had been thinking about the combination of cumin seeds and ground cinnamon, and wanted to use up some sage.

2 medium squashes (one Delicata, one Orange Acorn), cut in half and deseeded (keep the seeds to toast)
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp finely chopped sage leaves
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
salt+pepper

Heat the oven to 400F. Chop the squash halves into wedges, leaving the skin on each. Toss the wedges with the rest of the ingredients, then tip onto a lightly oiled baking tin. Roast for 25-30 min, until soft to a poke with a fork. You can turn them midway through to avoid browning the bottom side too much.


These were yum.  Ate them with wild+brown rice mix and bean puree. Definitely fun to leave the skin on when the skin is so pretty. I kind of like the texture contrast it brings too. Liked both squash varieties: no closer to settling on my favourite kind of squash. Think the trick may just be to find nice fresh / ripe ones.

Kale salad with radish and spelt

All my salads lately have involved honey-mustard dressing (+raisins+flaked almonds). It's simple and tasty and storecupboard-friendly, and if you ask me it goes with almost anything. I guess it's kind of a go-to comfort food for me: I've been somewhat distracted by preparing for my trip to Scotland. This time it was kale's turn. I've been experimenting a bit with kale salads, this time I thought I'd try it super simple. The kale and the daikon radish both came in last week's bumper CSA. The kale was listed as 'White Russian Kale', which suggests, as S pointed out, that it might taste like kahlua, vodka and cream. Not so, but it was quite nice anyway: the lobed, non-crinkly variety.

1 bunch kale, washed, leafy parts only (stripped from main stems and torn into manageable pieces)
1 cup whole spelt berries (or wheat berries)
2 tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tsp honey
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
salt+pepper
1/4 of a medium sized daikon radish, peeled and thinly sliced
small handful of golden raisins (would have liked cranberries but I was out)
small handful of flaked toasted almonds

Put the spelt on to cook (should take ~ 20 min). Prepare the kale and let it drain. Mix the dressing (mustard through salt+pepper) in a serving bowl. Add the kale and mix thoroughly, using hands to make sure all the kale is coated. Let it sit for a while to soften - at least half an hour. When ready to serve add the sliced radish, raisins and almonds and toss. Serve over the cooked spelt (or you could mix it all together before serving).


I liked this. I think this kale variety is perhaps a little better for salads than the regular crinkly stuff - with less surface area it seems to soften easier / be a bit less fibrous. Perhaps they just happened to be younger leaves, I don't know. Anyway, it definitely filled a comfort food gap for a late supper after aerials, and the crunchy peppery radish/irony green kale/sweet dried fruit/toasty crisp almonds were a pretty complete combination.

Vanilla bean and coconut oil biscuits

I bought a few things I'd had trouble finding locally from a spice purveying website the other day: celery seeds, cream of tartar... I was really happy with my purchase - the items were reasonably priced, there was a good selection, I could find everything I wanted, delivery was free, the package arrived quickly... I also gave in to temptation and bought some vanilla pods while I was there - I came across them while browsing and I've never cooked with them / always meant to.

Then they sat in my spice cupboard for a month or so. I was beginning to wonder if I might still never get around to cooking with them. Until I saw this recipe and it suggested a perfect opportunity.

(makes about 14 large, thin biscuits)

3 oz sugar
1/4 tsp ground sea salt
1 whole vanilla bean
4 oz coconut oil
5 oz flour (mixture of plain and wholemeal)
1/4 tsp baking powder

Snip the hard tips off the vanilla bean and discard. Snip the rest into inch long pieces and put into a spice blender. Add some of the sugar and blend until the bean is broken up completely into tiny pieces. Transfer the vanilla bean / sugar mixture to a mixing bowl along with the rest of the sugar. Add the coconut oil and beat until smooth. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and mix to make a smooth dough.

Take balls of the dough (about 2 inch diameter spheres) and roll / squash out between two pieces of baking paper until about 5 mm thick. Transfer to a baking tray lined with baking paper. When the tray is full, move it to the fridge and chill for about half an hour. The biscuits will firm up in the fridge and become much easier to move around. While they are chilling, heat the oven to 340F. When ready, move the tray(s) of rolled out biscuits to the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, until lightly browned around the edges. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the trays for 5-10 minutes before carefully moving to a cooling rack. They are quite fragile so be careful.


These biscuits don't look like much (misshapen and brownish), but they have an intense taste: the coconut and vanilla are sweet and familiar / exotic both at once. And they're crumbly and flaky and melt-in-the-mouth. They aren't very pretty and a bit lacking in substance for my taste, so I don't know if they will become staples, but they are definitely lovely. And it was really easy to use that vanilla bean - I am inspired to think of something exciting to make with my second one. Perhaps in icing?