Recipe - Sausage, Bean & Cheese Pasties

I haven't done a recipe in a while so it's time I posted another. I also spied that English Mum was holding another bake-off and this time, you can win a whole fridge freezer. As I need one before our current one dies a death, I thought I'd give it a go.

These pasties are fast becoming a family favourite. What do I mean "becoming"? They already are! Monkey asks for them. They are great food to eat on the run, and work hot or cold. Although they are a bit time-consuming (but not difficult) to make, they can easily be reheated so I tend to make them in advance. And they can be frozen too, which is entirely appropriate given the prize for the bake-off!

Pasties are obviously the original easy to eat anywhere food. These ones are different though - instead of the crust being pastry, it's made from bread dough so really, I guess, they may be technically more like a calzone. But we're not Italian and the filling is definitely British so pasty, it most definitely is. When I first saw the recipe for this, I was intrigued and had to try them out. I'm really glad I did. The result is much lower in fat than a conventional pasty - the original recipe says there are about 350 calories per portion when a standard pasty is more like 500 calories.

This is also quite an economical recipe as none of the ingredients are expensive. Don't get really cheap sausages or they'll just be greasy - I bought some Waitrose essential pork sausages for less than £1 and when cooked, they lost hardly any fat, so they are a decent but inexpensive option. I've tweaked the original recipe somewhat and provide you options for making the dough. In addition, I think the filling only needs one tin of baked beans as I'm always left with quite a lot of filling (or I'm stingy with it but I don't think so) but feel free to add a second tin if you really think it needs it.

Finally, if you wanted to spice these up a bit, I think a dash of Worcester sauce, Tabasco, chilli powder or curry powder would all work well. I reckon also you could vary the cheese for a bit of variety.

These pasties were our tea tonight - Thursday after school is a whirl of activities with Missy Woo having ballet, and Monkey having football so these are great as we can eat in shifts and if I've got my act together, I don't have to do any cooking.

Sausage, Bean & Cheese Pasties
Makes 12

Ingredients

500g/1b 2oz pack bread mix or dough made from 500g/1b 2oz flour
8 sausages or 500g/1lb 2oz sausagemeat
1 420g/15oz can of baked beans
140g/5oz cheddar, grated (we like mature)
1 egg, beaten

1. First, make your dough. Either make up the bread mix according to the packet instructions or use your favourite bread recipe and leave to rise. Alternatively, make the dough in the breadmaker using the dough options. 

2. Whilst that is rising or working in your breadmaker, make your filling. Skin the sausages and roll into about 6 to 8 small meatballs per sausage. Heat a large frying pan and brown the little meatballs, in batches if the pan is too crowded. Drain off any excess fat before returning all of them to then and adding the tin of beans. If you're going to add anything to spice it up, do so now. Stir to combine the filling thoroughly then take the pan off the heat to cool whilst you deal with the dough. 

3. When the dough is ready, heat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6 and grease 2 or 3 large baking sheets well. I find I need to tip the dough out onto a workshop to relax the dough slightly for 10-15 mins before using but you may find different. I also think dough from a breadmaker needs a bit of knocking back as there seem to be lots of big bubbles by this stage. 

4. Divide the dough into 12 pieces. Keep the other pieces of dough covered with a tea towel or oiled cling film whilst you roll each piece out into a circle about 17cm/7 in in diameter. I find this a bit challenging so don't worry too much if they won't roll out to that size - the important thing is that they don't tear. 

5. Fill each circle (I fill as I go, you can roll them all out first if you like) with a scoop of the filling and a scattering of cheese. You'll need to put the filling to one side so that you can make the proper D shape that pasties are, but leaving the edge clear. Fold the rest of the dough over, pressing the edges together to seal and crimp together. I find that rolling the edges round makes the most effective seal. Transfer to the oiled baking sheet. You can keep them covered if you like but I find it makes no difference. 

6. Once all the pasties are made, brush with some beaten egg and place in the oven. Cook for 15-20 minutes until they are looking all golden and have risen nicely. Remove from oven and cool slightly on a wire rack. They can be eaten warm or cold. They also freeze well - cool well and freeze on a covered tray. Transfer to a freezer bag once fully frozen and seal. They defrost overnight in a fridge or 4-5 hours at room temperature. They can be reheated in a hot oven for about 10 minutes until piping hot.

(PS If you don't seal well, the cheese will leak out of crust as shown above!)

Fresh Bread Bake Off entry - if at first you don't succeed, try again.

I confess, I am a bit of a bread nerd. This mostly stems from when I did an entry level teaching qualification a year or so ago. As part of it, I had to do a mini teach on any subject and I chose bread as my subject, exploring the science behind breadmaking and comparing handmade bread with traditional white sliced bread. I had never made bread by hand successfully until then, although I often use a breadmaker. Having just researched the science for my prep (and taking myself back 20 years in the process - some of my degree included some food science), I understood more about the process. When I made my bread,  I made sure that I kneaded it properly and I found kneading very therapeutic. The results were amazing. I did a taste test with my "students" and they were all pretty impressed with the taste and texture I got as well as noticing the difference in colour. If you make bread by hand, you don't get white bread - the crumb is distinctly cream coloured, although that can depend on what other ingredients are in the bread. White sliced is blindingly white thanks to the bleaching agents they add - and that's just the start of the nasties.

The recipe I used for making bread then is from Nigella's How To Eat. It's great but it uses fresh yeast so I have to remember to get some from Asda (they give it away) and then try to use it all but inevitably, some of it gets thrown. So when English Mum blogged an easy bread recipe for bread using easy bake yeast, I thought I'd give it a go, especially as a few days later, she launched her Fresh Bread Bake Off competition.

My first attempt was not terribly successful - it took ages to rise and I couldn't figure out why. The resulting bread was OK but not as light as I'm used to. A few days later, I worked it out. I have dried yeast in the fridge that I use in my breadmaker. I thought it was easy bake but something caught my eye and I realised it said it wasn't suitable for breadmaker use! I'd only bought active yeast that needs to be activated BEFORE mixing into the dough. No wonder it didn't work properly!

So I had another go following English Mum's recipe but this time I activated the yeast first (which involved adding it to warm water and leaving it to stand for a while, nothing complicated). I also added less oil this time, using 15g instead of 50g which is closer to the proportions that Nigella uses. I may have used a bit too much yeast because after half an hour of rising, it was like this.

And when I turned it back onto the worktop I had to take another picture because you can clearly see the network of gluten chains forming so you get the nerdy shot:

My only problem is that the bread seem to puff up but also spread a lot. Anyway, here is the finished loaf (excuse fairly rubbish photography!), which looks fairly rustic so I guess it's a cottage loaf.

It's gorgeous still warm but as I'm trying to be good, I didn't eat the lot in one go so it's still going and it makes good toast although I can't put it in the toaster thanks to the odd shape. It tastes great, which is particularly noticeable if you've had commercial bread recently, which tastes like cotton wool in comparison with real bread.

Why don't you have a go? You'll have to be quick if you want to enter English Mum's Fresh Bread Bake Off - she needs your entry by midnight on Valentine's Day. The prize is a range of Marriage's flours and some scrapers so you could get more baking done. And then become a bread nerd, just like me.

Hallowe'en Pumpkin Cake

The lovely English Mum is running an Autumn Bake-off competition and I thought I would have another go. I don't do pretty cakes but I thought I'd enter anyway.

When I thought about what to do with a vaguely autumnal theme, I was a bit stumped. I made parkin once and it wasn't all that successful. I thought of something appley but again, apple cakes don't seem to do it for me. I like them with blackberries but they are past their best by early September and I refuse to pay supermarket prices for blackberries.

At this time of the year, I normally end up making a cake for Hallowe'en as we do a fundraiser/family event in our NCT branch. So, I set about thinking of a cake to make that would fit both briefs. Of course, pumpkins are a big feature of Hallowe'en so I set about wondering if you could make a pumpkin cake. After all, pumpkin pie is a big thing in the US, right? So pumpkin cake can't be that different. I tweeted this thought out loud and some lovely ladies furnished me with links to recipes. I was sold on this recipe when I realised that it doesn't require the pumpkin to be pre-cooked, thus making the whole process easier and quicker. It's very similar to carrot cake, right down to the cream cheese frosting, which I'll admit now is not my forte.

I actually made this with butternut squash because I had one on I wanted to use. The timings are slightly variable as the pumpkin or squash can vary wildly in water content so it might take a lot longer to cook.

Here's how I made it

Hallowe'en Pumpkin Cake
(makes around 15 pieces)

Ingredients


for the cake
300g self-raising flour
300g light brown muscovado sugar
3 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g dried fruit (I used raisins, you could use sultanas)
1/2 tsp salt
200g butter
4 eggs, beaten
zest of 1 orange
1 tbsp orange juice
500g (peeled and deseeded) pumpkin or butternut squash, grated

to finish the cake
85g butter, softened
200g full fat soft cheese (low fat doesn't work, don't do it!)
100g icing sugar
zest of 1 orange and juice of half

First, prepare your tin. Take a roasting or baking tin around 20x30cm (8x12 in), butter it well and line with baking parchment. Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

Mix all the dry ingredients for the cake together (not the pumpkin) in a large bowl until combined. Melt the butter (best done in a jug), then beat in the eggs and add the zest and juice. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir until well combined, then stir in the grated pumpkin. Pour the cake mix into the prepared tin. Bake for 30 mins or until golden and firm, springing back when touched. I found mine needed much longer as the middle was not cooked so I turned it down to 160C to avoid burning and cooked for about another 15 mins.

Whilst the cake is baking, make the frosting by beating together the cheese, butter, icing sugar, most of the orange zest and 1tsp of the juice until smooth and place in the fridge until needed.

Take the cake when done out of the oven and leave it to cool for 5 mins before removing it from the tin and placing on a wire rack to cool. Whilst the cake is still warm, prick all over with a skewer and drizzle over the rest of the orange juice. Leave to cool thoroughly.

Once cool, you can trim the edges of the cake (the sides of my tin weren't straight so I did, but you really don't have to.). Swirl the frosting over the top of the cake using a flat knife or spatula. Decorate with the rest of the orange zest.

And so, finally, let me unveil my entry to English Mum's Autumn Bake Off. It's shocking photography but I made the cake, went out for a curry, came home and finished off the cake and I remembered late on that I hadn't taken a pic, so it's as bad as, if not worse than my usual standard. Still, it's all I got so this will have to do.

(Late edit, but here is some of the cake cut up and ready to be eaten at the Hallowe'en Party.)

And if you want to have a go yourself, please do. The winner will get a cook book by Diana Henry and there is a kid's prize of a Chef Curly Bear. You've still got until midnight on 12th November to enter the competition so get baking!

Happy Hallowe'en!

Inside Out Bounty Cake

One of my favourite flavours is coconut and you may have seen on this blog a few weeks back, that I blogged a favourite recipe of mine for coconut cake. Around the same time, I also blogged the recipe for my friend Helen's chocolate cake which I have discovered is both easy and impressive.

I was thinking about cakes - as you do - and I remembered that a favourite dessert I once had on a holiday was coconut ice-cream with a warmish chocolate sauce. And then I thought of Bounty bars - coconut in the middle, chocolate on the outside. It got me thinking - maybe I could make a chocolate coconut cake. So, I set off on a Google search, the results of which were disappointing. Half the recipes stipulated cake mix as an ingredient and I have to be honest, I really don't see the point when I have the basic ingredients to hand.

I therefore set about devising my own cake using both of the above recipes. What I decided on was to have the chocolate cake in the middle, with the addition of some coconut to give it a bit of flavour, and coconut frosting on the outside, kind of like a Bounty inside out, so that's why I've called it Inside Out Bounty Cake! I've never devised my own recipe like this before, so it was fairly ground-breaking for me. I am good at following recipes, not creating them out of nothing.

I set off on this journey on Wednesday after the children went to bed. Unfortunately, after I'd baked the cake, I discovered I had no icing sugar so had to make the icing the next day as I was home alone with the kids and couldn't go to the supermarket. I was a bit dubious at first because I ended up with extra icing with my first piece and it seemed a bit sickly but it has been universally wolfed down and praised by those who have tried it. You only need a small slice so in theory, it lasts ages - unless you have kids who love coconut. Mine do!

Inside Out Bounty Cake

Ingredients
For the cake:
275g/10oz caster sugar
175g/6oz soft tub margarine
3 eggs
175g/6oz natural yogurt
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 tbsp coconut cream (try to use the thick part if it's separated a bit)
200g/7oz self raising flour
50g/2oz cocoa powder
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g/2oz desiccated coconut

For the icing:
100g/4oz butter, at room temp or slightly softened
300g/10oz icing sugar
4tbsp coconut cream or to taste (NOT creamed coconut - I buy the cream from Waitrose or Booths)

1. Pre-heat oven to 180^oC/350^oF/gas 4. Grease a 32cm (9in) spring form cake tin. Line the base with non-stick baking paper. Dust the inside of the tin with a little flour, then tap out the excess. (An 8in tin will also work although you may need to adjust cooking time.)

2. Beat the caster sugar and margarine in a mixing bowl until smooth (I use an electric mixer). Beat in eggs, vanilla essence, yoghurt and coconut cream. Sift in flour, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda, tip in the desiccated coconut.  Stir until fully combined. Spoon mixture into prepared tin and level the surface.

3. Bake cake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Put the tin onto a wire rack, and cool for 5 minutes. Turn the cake out onto rack to cool completely.

4. Make the icing once the cake is completely cool. Mix the butter and icing sugar together and stir in the coconut cream. Beat until smooth. You may need to add a little more icing sugar or coconut cream to get a nice spreading consistency. Swirl over the top and sides of the cooled cake.




As you can see, I made the icing a teensy bit runny but it did make it soft and nice to eat. There is only one piece of the cake left now but then I took a big chunk of it round to my friend's today. There were 7 children and 3 mummies - most of the kids had at least one piece, if not more!

What do you think to my experiment then? Leave me a comment if you try the recipe. Happy baking!

(This is an entry to English Mum's Big July Bake Off, for which the prize is a Green & Black's hamper. Entry details are on the post but entries close today - that's 31st July - so if you want to enter, get baking and snapping pretty quick!)