A Few Recipes

Well you asked for recipes, so here goes... The first two are taken from Mum's typewritten recipe book. It's full of cracking 70's recipes and a rather comedy list of utensils apparently vital to their success. Anyone know what on earth a larding needle is??


Treacle Toffee

4oz treacle
4oz golden syrup
1 lb dark soft brown sugar
¼ pint water
¼ level teaspoon cream of tartar
3 oz margarine

- Prepare your tin, either by brushing with oil or lining with greaseproof or baking paper.
- Weigh out the treacle and syrup and add to a large pan along with the water, sugar and cream of tartar.
- Heat VERY GENTLY until every grain of sugar has dissolved.
- Then add the margarine and bring to a sharp boil.
- Don't stir the mixture but allow it to boil for approx 15 mins. You're aiming for 270 degrees/hard ball on the sugar thermometer, or you can test it by putting a few drops in a cup of cold water, then rolling them between your fingers.

- When it's done, pour into the tin and leave to cool.
- You can score lines on the top when it's cool but not firm. I prefer to just leave it to set and then whack it with a hammer - I prefer odd sized chunks of toffee rather than neat little squares.
- Store in an airtight tin.

Vanilla Fudge

1 small tin evaporated milk
2 tablespoons water
1 lb granulated sugar
2 level tablespoons golden syrup
1 oz butter
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

I took this pic when I made the first batch a few days ago - the ingredients are slightly different. This is mostly because I went shopping without a list and bought condensed milk instead of evaporated, so had to work to a recipe from the Nestle website. I prefer the family version below though.

- Put milk and water into a heavy based saucepan and bring to boil.
- Add sugar, syrup and butter, lower the heat and stir constantly until the sugar dissolves.
- Bring to the boil again and boil briskly, stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes until soft ball stage/240 degrees is reached on the sugar thermometer.

- Remove from heat and stir in vanilla essence.
- Leave to cool slightly, then beat until the fudge becomes creamy and loses its gloss (or until you get bored of whisking, whichever comes first!)

- Spread into a tin and leave to cool.

- The recipe, being a bit oldschool, says to use a shallow buttered tin and to mark into squares when not quite cool. I use my handy silicone loaf tin and find that this means you can just turn it out onto a chopping board and slice it up once it's properly cool and set.

Florentines

1½ oz butter
4 fl oz (125 ml) whipping cream
4½ oz sugar
4½ oz flaked almonds
2 oz mixed peel
1½ oz glace cherries, chopped
2½ oz plain flour
8 oz plain chocolate

- Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4/350 F/180 C and grease two baking sheets or line with baking paper.
- Melt the butter, cream and sugar together and slowly bring to the boil.
- Take off the heat and stir in the almonds, mixed peel, cherries and flour until blended.

- Place teaspoonfuls of the batter 1-2 inches apart on the baking sheet and flatten with a fork. You don't want them to be too thick or they won't cook properly.

- Bake for about 10 mins, until they're brown at the edges. They will have spread out and gone a bit messy - don't worry! Get a palette knife and just push the edges in gently. Bottom half of the tray have been tidied up top, top half is as they come out of the oven.

- Leave to cool very slightly on the tray and then transfer to a wire rack.
- When properly cooled down, start to melt your chocolate.
- Turn the florentines over and get spreading!

- If you're feeling swanky you can run a serrated knife over the choc when it's about to set to create a pretty pattern but quite frankly, I can never be bothered.

Hope you give them a go! I can only personally speak for the toffee but I'm told the others are very good too and homemade goodies always go down well as gifts.

ps - Giveaway winners (and various other people...) - I went to the post office yesterday. The poor girl behind the counter looked at me in horror as I kept pulling parcel after parcel out of a humoungus bag. She did admire the gold wrapping on one of them though. I don't usually go in for spangly outer wrapping but I had so much stuff to send that I ran out of a) jiffy bags, b) the thin plasticy envelopes I keep for ebaying, c) brown paper and sparkly paper was the only thing left!

pps - In other news, I nearly had a very happy moment in the charity shop next to the post office when I saw a vintage Aquascutum tweed suit for a tenner. Upon closer inspection it was actually just a vintage tweed suit with an Aquascutum label shoddily stitched into it. Booooo! I would still have bought it anyway mind you (am not a label snob) but it turned out to be rather too large for me. Never mind, more money to spend on drinks at the work Christmas do tonight!