Blueberry Pie (V)

Pastry week on the Great British Bake Off. So lets make a pie. This is one I have wanted to try and bake for a while. Hope you enjoy it


Makes 1 Pie

500g Shortcrust Pastry (Or Make your Own)
450g Blueberries (Frozen or Fresh)
Lemon Juice
Stick of Cinnamon
25g Cornflour
125g Caster Sugar
1 Egg
1- 3 tsp Granulated Sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 200c/180c Fan Assisted. Split the dough. Use 2/3 of the dough and roll to cover a flan tin (25cm). Save the other third.

2. In a small/medium, pour enough lemon juice to cover the bottom of the pan. Then tip in the blueberries, cinnamon stick and caster sugar and stir. Heat over a low heat for ten minutes. There should be fluid. Add the cornflour and give another mix. Keep on heat for 5 minutes. The blueberry mixture should harden. Make sure you occasionally stir so the mixture doesn't burn. Take off heat and allow to cool.

3. While cooling make the strips for the top of the pastry. Roll out the dough so it could just cover the length of the tin. Then cut 6 strips of 3cm width.

4. Pour blueberry mixture into the covered tin. Then layer over the pastry strips. Egg wash and sprinkle granulated sugar over the pastry.

5. Put in the oven for 18-20 minutes. The pastry should be golden brown. Leave to cool for a minute before taking out of the tin. Serve with thick cream.

Cider Battered Fish, Wedges and Mushy Peas

Enjoy this on a Friday! Or a Saturday or even Sunday if you don't want to cook a roast. It's up to you. If you want to cook for more people increase everything apart from the Sunflower oil.

Serves 1

Fish

175g Self Raising Flour

25g Cornflour

150ml Cider

1 Fillet of Sustainable White Fish (I used Plaice)

Salt and Pepper

2 tbsp Self Raising Flour
600ml Sunflower Oil

Wedges

1 Large Potato

2 tbsp Olive Oil

½ tsp Dry Mint

½ tsp Dry Rosemary

Salt and Pepper

Mushy Peas

Mug of Frozen

2 New potatoes, cut in half

Hanful of Fresh Mint, chopped

Knob of Butter

Salt and Pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200c/180c fan assisted. To make the batter, sift the 175g Self Raising Flour and cornflour into a mixing bowl. Then gradually introduce the cider while whisking. You should have a thick consistency. Leave to prepare the rest of the meal.

2. Cut the potato into wedges. Par boil in a pan for 5 minutes. Then drain, add the oil, herbs and salt and pepper and shake in the pan. Then tip onto a baking tray. Cook for 40 minutes in the oven. Turn after 20 minutes.

3. For the peas. Boil the new potatoes and peas in a pan until cooked. In a deep pan add the sunflower oil and heat up to 200c. If you haven't got a thermometer drop a bit of batter in the pan and it should start to cook when dropped in the pan.

4. Put 2 tbsp of Self Raising Flour on a plate and cover the fish with the flour. Give the batter another stir. Then dip the fish in batter. Add to the pan with the sunflower oil. Cook for 2-3 minutes then turn over and cook for a further 2-3 minutes until the fish is golden brown all over. Place (Plaice get it) on paper towel so the excess oil comes off.

5. Mash the peas with mint, butter and bit of salt and pepper. Plate all parts of the meal on the plate and enjoy with a good cider.

Viennese Whirls (V)

A lovely biscuit which is delectable with a nice cup of tea. Tried and tested on friends and family.

Makes 15 Biscuits

Biscuit
250g Butter, at room temperature
50g of Icing Sugar
250g Plain Flour, shifted
50g Cornflour
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Filling
100g Butter, left at room temperature
100g  Raspberry Jam
1/2 vanilla extract
200g Icing Sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 200c/180c fan assisted oven. Grease a baking tray and line with grease proof paper.

2. In a food processor put all the biscuit ingredients in and blend until smooth. This will take a couple of minutes. Make sure you put all of the mixture from the processor into the pipping bag with a large star nozzle (Pipping Bag I used can be seen at the bottom of the post).

3. When pipping the mixture onto the tray make sure the pipping bag is at a 90 degree angle to the tray and squeeze the mixture out a medium size rosettes of dough. Make sure they are spread out so they don't stick together when they bake. Put in the oven and make for 12 minutes or until golden brown.

4. Leave the biscuits to cool on a wire rack. While they are cooling, make the butter icing by mixing the butter, icing sugar and the vanilla extract in a bowl. Mix with a fork until fully combined.

5. Once the biscuits are cooled put a small teaspoon of jam on the smooth side of the biscuit, butter icing and top with a biscuit. Repeat the process until you are out of biscuits. Dust with some icing sugar and serve.

Eton Mess (V)

A traditional english poudding. The myth was that Eton mess was crweated when a meringue dessert was dropped accidently, and whatever was salvaged was served as a crushed meringue with strawberries and cream.

Meringue

Serves 6

Meringue
4 Egg Whites
225g Caster Sugar
1 tsp Cornflour
1tsp White Wine Vinegar

Vanilla Pod
284ml Double Cream
1 Punnets of Strawberries, cut the stems off
1 Punnets of Raspberries
2 tbsp Icing Sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180/160 fan assisted. Cover a baking tray with a baking sheet.

2. Using an electric whisk (using a normal whisk is good exercise but takes a long time), whisk the egg whites until it begins to stiffen.

3. Gradually add the sugar while whisking the egg whites. Then when the sugar is used up keep whisking for about 5 minutes. Then add the cornflour and white wine vinegar. It should be stiff and if you tip upside down it should stay in the mixing bowl.

4. Spoon the meringue mix onto a baking sheet. Put in the oven for an hour and 40 minutes.

5. Put the double cream in a bowl then scrape the vanilla pod seeds into the bowl with the icing sugar. Whisk until the cream is stiff.

6. Once the meringue is baked brake up into small bits. Mix with the fruit and cream. Serve.

Custard (V)

A lovely accompaniment to my crumble recipe, pies and a lot of puddings.

Serves 4

3 Egg yolks
25g Caster Sugar
1 Vanilla Pod
2 tsp Cornflour
1 Pint Whole Milk

1. Put a pan on the hob and add the milk to the pan with the vanilla pod. Keep the vanilla pod in the milk until the milk begins to boil.

2. In a bowl whisk the egg yolk, sugar and cornflour.

3. Add the egg mixture to the milk while stirring. Keep over the heat and stir for about 5 minutes

4.  Strain the mixture into another saucepan and keep on the heat until the custard thickens.