Bread Pudding

This is comfort food at it's best - squidgy and stodgy in all the right ways, and with a warming hint of mixed spice to finish it off. Perfect for chilly February afternoons. This recipe is another one of the family oldies I found whilst sorting through my recipe books - mum can still vividly remember her granny making it, and she always requested the crunchy corner piece! As with most old recipes, there was no picture, and this led to a slight mistake on my choice of cake tin - I went for a loaf tin, but I was later informed that a traybake is the better option - this is because you get more surface area, and so more crunchy Demerara sugar topping per slice (wow, that was almost scientific, Heston would be proud!). So, you'll see my loaf cake version in the picture, but I'd advise that you use a traybake tin of about 20cm/20cm (you want to be able to fill it at least a couple of inches deep).

Ingredients:

225g stale wholemeal bread

225g mixed dried fruit (get a mix that includes dried peel if possible, as this adds a great hint of citrus)

50g light soft brown sugar

50g margarine

1 and 1/s tsp mixed spice

1 egg

1 heaped tbsp demerara sugar to scatter on the top

Method:

1. Break up the bread into chunks (including the crusts), put it in a bowl, cover with water and stir it around for a couple of minutes to soften the bread. Put it into a sieve and push out the excess water (you may need to do this in two batches).
2. Put the soaked bread into a dry bowl and stir through all other ingredients (except demerara)
3. Grease your chosen tray (see comment above) and spoon in the mixture.
4. Push the mixture down and sprinkle the demerara sugar on the top.
5. Cook in the oven at 160 degrees celsius fan / 180 non fan for 1hr.
6. Leave to cool in the tin, then remove to store in an airtight tin.

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Wholemeal date and pecan slice

Having eaten more than my fair share of Almond and Semolina Slice last night, I decided something a little healthier was in order. Don't get me wrong, there's still sugar and I'd still call it a treat, just with a little less guilt (although life's too short for food guilt anyway!). Having seen the sugary sprinkle on the picture, you may well ask what makes this recipe anything close to healthy? In essence, it's wholemeal flour and oats instead of plain flour, and the sugar quantity's been greatly reduced by the use of a dried date filling in the place of jam.

I decided on this recipe having watched the Comic Relief Bake Off and being reminded once again of Mary Berry's brilliance. This recipe is adapted from her Apricot and Walnut Sandwich Bars in her Baking Bible - I used dates instead of apricots (and I removed the added sugar from the filling because I find dates plenty sweet enough on their own) and pecans instead of walnuts to compliment the toffee-like flavour of the dates. I've also added a little more water to the filling as I find that dates soak up more liquid than apricots.

Method and ingredients (makes about 10 bars):

50g porridge oats

50g light soft muscovado sugar

40g chopped pecans

175g margarine, melted

175g chopped dried dates

100ml water

1 - 2tsp cinnamon sugar (you can mix this yourself, no need to buy special sugar - just mix 1part cinnamon to 2 parts sugar)

1. Place dates and water into a saucepan and bring to the boil, then leave to simmer until the dates have absorbed all the liquid (they should look almost jammy). Set aside.
2. Stir together all the other ingredients except the cinnamon sugar.
3. Grease and line a 18cm by 18cm square cake tin.
4. Spread half of the oat mixture into the tin, cover with the date mixture and then top with the remaining oat mix.
5. Sprinkle over the cinnamon sugar and cook a 150 degrees C oven for 45 minutes (until firm and golden brown).
6. Cut into bars whilst warm.

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Mum's almond and semolina slice with blackcurrant jam

I have to admit that I have a slight reliance on photos when it comes to choosing recipes. With 101 recipe books on the shelf, if it hasn't got a picture, the recipe tends to go back on the shelf and another book is searched through. It's a shallow habit I know, I should have more faith in the craftsman... and in  my own cooking for that matter. Determined to change this, I set about finding my oldest recipes, those without even a description, let alone a picture, in a hope to find some hidden gems - those passed down recipes which I had set aside to make way for another shiny new cookery book.

So did I find one you might ask? Well the answer is most definitely yes. I've entitled this recipe 'Mum's slice' because it was mum who always made it for me, but I think it's real heritage stretches back a little further judging by the paper... mum thinks it was passed down to her from her mum or possibly even her gran (I didn't even know they had almond essence back then!). It's one of those recipes that I have enjoyed eating for many a year, but one I've never looked at on paper or enquired about further - too busy enjoying it I suspect!

There's always something nerve-wracking about adapting a family recipe, something that's been cooked in the same way for years - and if I've enjoyed it so much, why change it? But I had a little yearning, a little adaptation I couldn't help but try. The dry ingredients always consisted of semolina and self raising flour, with the almond flavour coming from the essence. So I decided to substitute some of this for a bit of ground almonds, to compliment the essence. I'm pretty happy with the result, but I still love the original - so feel free to just swap the ground almonds back for self raising flour if you'd prefer.

Ingredients and method:

Rub together 140g semolina, 110g self raising flour, 30g ground almonds, 140g caster sugar and 140g margarine.

Add 1 beaten egg and half a tsp of almond essence (I always find the smell so nostalgic!) and mix to a stiff paste.

Press half the mixture into a lined, square cake or swiss roll tin (or just greased and dusted with flour) - mine was a square 18cm/18cm tin.

Dot with blackcurrant (or any flavour you fancy) jam (about 130g) and then spoon on the second half of the mixture in small pieces to cover most of the jam.

Scatter about 30g flaked almonds on the top and cook for about 30mins at 180 degrees c (I'd check after 20mins).

Leave to cool slightly, turn out of the tin and then leave on a wire rack to cool before storing it in an airtight tin (I often don't cut it into slices until I serve it so as to keep it as moist as possible).

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