New Year's Cake

Greeks love to celebrate the New Year with their "Vasilopita",a New Year's cake. Every family has their recipe, some yeast based and others more like a cake. The fun of this tradition is that a coin is hidden in the cake and on New Year's Day it is cut into as many pieces as there are people present, including one "gia to spiti" (for the home) and one "gia to xristo"(for Christ). The person who receives the coin is thought to have good luck all year round.

Every year my "yiayia"(grandmother) bakes this cake for our family but this year I thought I would bake one myself.

Vasilopita

2 cups sugar
225g softened butter
5 eggs (separated)
1/4 cup brandy
3/4 cup milk
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
zest of an orange
1/2 cup orange juice
500g self raising flour
pinch of salt

(Makes enough to fill two 23 cm cake tins)

1) Beat the sugar and butter together till pale.
2) Gradually beat in the egg yolks along with the vanilla essence and orange zest.
3) Combine the orange juice with the baking soda and add this to the batter as well.
4) Pour the milk into a jug along with the brandy.
5) Alternating between the two, fold in the flour and milk mixture into the batter.
6) Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks and fold this into the mixture.
7) Finally mix in the walnuts.
8) Grease and line the tins and pour in the cake batter.
9) Bake at 150C for 50 minutes,you know it's done when a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the top has gone a lovely honey colour.

It's all about the oats

I can pretty much resist all types of temptations. I am not the type of person who will open a packet of biscuits and 15 minutes later find that the whole thing has been completely demolished. However when it comes to anything oaty, its a completely different story all together. When I am faced with a golden, chewy, flapjack, a comforting bowl of porrdige or even a great oatcake topped with a chunk of mature chedar cheese, my will power just seems to go out of the window. However, what always makes me feel slightly better after I have devoured half a tray of freshly baked flapjacks is the nutritional benefits to eating these lovely little, pearly oats.
As we all know oats are a great source of slow releasing energy. They also recieve pretty good press in terms of their cholesterol lowering properties and also help reduce the chance of heart disease, which lets be honest at my age is not something I tend to think about, but nevertheless we all know that oats are good for us. So I would say, get in that kitchen, get out a bowl,a wooden spoon and put some music on and make these delicious biscuits.

Oat and Raisin Cookies

225g softened butter
150g granulated sugar
200g light brown sugar
2 eggs
245g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
175g oats
240g raisins
(optional: few handful of white chocolate chips)

1) Beat the butter together with the sugars, till light and creamy.
2) Mix the flour, salt, cinnamon, baking powder, oats and raisins.
3) Add the eggs one at a time to the creamed butter and sugar.
4) Gradually add the flour and oat mixture(along with the white chocolate)to the butter and mix till everything comes together.
5) Chill the batter for a few hours.
6) Place 50g balls of the batter onto a greased baking tray and then flatten the biscuits a little with a fork, the back of a spoon or just with your hands. Bake for 20 minutes or until the just begin to turn a bit brown at the edges, at 180C.

Cupcake Week

For all those who love cupcakes, this week is a very exciting one. It's National Cupcake Week, an event organised by the British Baker magazine to honour our love for these little treats. This means we finally have a valid excuse to bake some yummy cupcakes. So go ahead, set aside half an hour and make yourselves a batch of these delicious cupcakes.

Cupcakes:
150g sugar
150g butter
150g self raising flour
3 eggs
1/2 tsp baking powder
100ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract or grated zest of a lemon

1)Beat the sugar and butter together till light and fluffy
2)Gradually beat in the eggs, one by one
3)Fold in the flour and baking powder along with the vanilla or lemon zest.
4)Fill the cupcake cases just over 3/4 full and bake at 180C for 20-25 mins

Butter Icing:
50g butter
200g icing sugar
2 tbsp milk

Melt the butter and mix with the icing sugar until fluffy and light, then stir in the milk. At this point you can add any food colouring that you want, my colour of choice is usually pink.
Now sit back and enjoy the joy that is this amazing week

Brownies

Now there are a couple of recipes I have which as my close friends will know, I never part with. .. But I've decided to not be so selfish and to share one of my favourite recipes with you: the ultimate brownie recipe.

Most of my recipes are adaptations of others’, such as the flapjack recipe I use which I have adapted from James Martins’ Chocolate and Ginger Flapjacks. The brownie recipe I rely on, but to which I have made a few tweaks to, is Nigel Slater’s. I find that after years of painfully searching for a good brownie recipe that is rich but not too sickly, this one is, as I said mentioned earlier, The Ultimate Brownie recipe!

Brownies

250g dark chocolate

300g sugar

3 eggs

250g butter

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

60g flour

60g cocoa

Pinch of salt

1) Melt 200g of the chocolate and set it aside to cool

2) Beat the sugar and softened butter together until pale and fluffy.

3) Gradually beat in the eggs one by one (if the mixture starts to curdle add 1 tbsp of flour)

4) Fold in the melted chocolate and vanilla and cut up the remaining 50g into gravel sized chunks and fold

that in as well.

5) Lastly sift in the cocoa, flour and baking powder and fold in gently.

6) Pour into a square 23 x 23 cm tin and bake for 35 mins (or until the top has formed a thin crust) at 180C/ fan

160C.

These are best served immediately, if you want them as a dessert, with a melting ball of vanilla ice cream and a rich chocolate sauce made with equal amounts of dark chocolate and cream melted together in the microwave. Or they are best made the day before if to be eaten as a snack or packed in a lunchbox as they tend to keep their shape better when they are a day old.

A evening in Athens

Everytime I come back from university I fall in love with Athens all over again. You can get lost in all the nooks and crannies of Thisseio, Plaka, Psiri and never come across the same shop, the same art mural, the same cafeteria, there are just endless things to see and do. You can listen to the various buskers playing a jazzy, upbeat song or admire the Acropolis while nibbling on some nuts, bought from an old Greek man off the side of the street.
One thing I love about Greece is the culture of going out for a coffee and sitting there, chatting for hours on end. Greeks love their coffee and especially during the summer, they love their ice-cold frappe. You can go out any time of the day and you will struggle to find a place to sit down and have a drink. It's always at this time that I wonder "don't these people have jobs?", no wonder Greece is feeling the burn of the economic crisis. Walking down the pedestrianized pathway that leads you from the Acropolis area down to Thisseio, the road is paved with cafeterias. Row after row, table after table, cafe after cafe. For a second I was taken aback with the abundance of these coffe shops, but then it hit me, this is what we Greeks do, this is what we are famous for: sitting and lazing around, drinking endless amounts of coffee without a care in the world of what one should really be doing or what time of day it is. But that's what I love about the Greek νοωτροπία (way of thinking), they live a casual, carefree life. Especially in the summer, we wake up late, feast on lovely fresh melon and peaches all day, lounge by the sea and then decide to head off for dinner around 10 in the evening. What a life, eh?

Chocolate

If there is one thing I can't live without it's chocolate.
I have great will power but I struggle to go three days without a tiny hit of cocoa from a shop bought chocolate bar. To hell with all this fancy pants Swiss or French chocolate, I tend to like all dark chocolate. I hate to admit, all foodies should look away now, but I have to say that Somerfields' own brand, dark chocolate is great. At 40 pence a bar (yes, 40 p a bar!) you get all the great taste of rich cocoa and the great crisp sound when you break off a piece( or five) without the bitterness and without the horrible grainyness you get from other cheap chocolates. I even like Cadbury's Bournville dark chocolate and ASDA's own brand-dark chocolate. Maybe my preference for cheap chocolate comes with being a student, but I have tried many chocolates, from Gold & Blacks to Fair Trade and I will always go back to Bournville or good old Sommerfields.
However I will never turn down a bar of "good quality dark chocolate" . When I'm at uni and I want to have a square of chocolate after dinner I go for the cheap stuff . But when I bake with it and make brownies or chocolate chip cookies, I will definetly use a better quality chocolate, or whatever I can find in Asda that is a bit more expensive than 40p bar.

Apple Crumble Cake

Seeing as apples are at their best in February there is still an abundances of this great fruit around. Take advantage of this time and bake this amazing apple cake. Indeed this recipe is amazing, but the crumble topping does just take it from being a dull apple cake to a an absolutely delicious dessert.

Apple Crumble Cake

175g unsalted butter
150g sugar
4 apples (peeled, cored and sliced into thin wedges)
3 eggs
200g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder

150g creme fraiche ( I used reduced fat ; plain Greek (Total) yogurt could also be used)
zest of a lemon
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 tbsp honey or maple syrup

For the crumble topping:
80g almonds, finely chopped (can use hazelnuts or walnuts)
50g butter
50g brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
75g plain flour

1)Butter and line a 20/23 cm round tin.
2)For the crumble topping: melt the butter and mix in the brown sugar, cinnamon, flour and chopped nuts.
3) In a pan heat 25g of butter with 1tbsp of sugar and add the apple wedges. Cook these for about 10-15 minutes until they are tender and turn a lovely golden colour.
4) For the cake: cream the remaining butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then add the eggs one at a time( if the mixture looks like it may curdle, simply add 1tbsp of flour to the mixture).
5) Fold the flour, lemon zest, cinnamon and baking powder to the butter mixture. 6) Add the creme fraiche and mix together till you have a smooth batter.
7) Spoon about 2/3 of the cake mixture into the tin and spread it level, then sprinkle over about 1/3 of the crumble mix.
8) Pour in the remaining cake batter and top with a light layer of the crumble mix. Top this off with the apple slices, arranged neatly, and finally scatter the remaining crumble mixture over the top. If you want you could sprinkle over an extra tablespoon or two of almonds, to give the cake extra crunch.
9) Bake at 180C/ gas 4 for an hour and a half. If the cake seems to be getting brown too quickly, simply cover the top with a sheet of aluminium foil or baking parchment.
10) Once the cake has cooled for 10 minutes, heat the honey or maple syrup and drizzle over the top.