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Happy New Year everybody! Now that we’re all back into termtime and having to fill lunchboxes again, I thought a quick and easy traybake might go down well. My two love these and they’re easy enough for children to be able to make themselves. Commercial cereal bars frequently have a great deal of sugar in them, so is you’re trying to reduce your kids’ intake of sugar without them really noticing, this is one for you! And they’re really quick to throw together too.
This is another recipe from my mother-in-law and it has the old-style Australian approach to measurements which uses weight for wet or sticky ingredients and volume measured in cups or part cups for the dry ingredients. Don’t be put off by this. If you don’t have measuring cups, just use a teacup. After all, that’s how these recipes were originally made. Yes, the measurements will be a little less precise than with a scales, but this kind of recipe can cope with a bit of fuzziness here and there! If you really can’t be parted from your scales, 1 cup is more or less equivalent to 8oz / 240g. It’s not precise as the volume of 8oz of muesli is much greater than 8oz of sugar, but it’s close enough for it to work.
Recipe: Muesli Currant Bars
Ingredients
- 2oz / 60g softened Tomor
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- ¾ cup plain flour
- ½tsp baking powder
- 1 cup muesli
- 2tsp lemon zest
- 2tbsp lemon juice
- 1 cup currants
For the lemon icing
- 1tbsp lemon juice
- ¾ cup icing sugar
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 4 / 180C / F
- Line/grease a baking tray. I tend to use foil so that I can lift out the finished baking to cut it on a board rather than damage the surface of my tin.
- Cream the Tomor and sugar together until it is light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time (with a table spoon of the flour for each egg) and beat each one in until the mixture is smooth. If the mixture starts to curdle, just add a little bit more flour.
- Stir in the muesli, lemon zest, lemon juice and currants.
- Pour the mixture into the tin and spread it out with the back of a spoon, firming it down gently until it is level and smooth.
- Bake in the middle of the oven for about 30 minutes until the top is golden.
- Allow to cool in the tin.
- When it is completely cold, cover it with lemon icing made by mixing the lemon juice with the icing sugar. The mixture should be thick or it will run all over everywhere. I find icing sugar seems to behave differently every time I use it, so be prepared to adjust the quantity of either sugar or lemon juice depending on how the texture turns out.
Preparation time (duration): 15 minutes
Cooking time (duration): 30 minutes
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): 12+
Meal type: snack
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This is a tasty soup, with the rich orange colour of autumn leaves. It makes a quick, tasty lunch served with a hunk of No-Knead Bread.
Recipe: Autumn Soup
Ingredients
- a slosh of olive oil
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 12oz / 340g butternut squash, diced
- 3 carrots, diced
- 1 large sweet potato, diced
- a pinch of mixed herbs
- 2 pints / 1 litre hot water or chicken stock if you have your own
- 2 stock cubes (Kallo organic are good) if you have no stock
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil in your pressure cooker over a medium heat.
- Soften the onion for about 10 minutes while you chop the other veg. Stir regularly to avoid burning them.
- When the onion is golden and soft, add the garlic and herbs and fry off for a minute or two.
- Toss in the rest of the veg and give it all a good stir about to coat it all with the oil, herbs and garlic.
- Add the stock (or the stock cubes and hot water).
- Close up your pressure cooker and turn up the heat to get it up to pressure.
- Cook for 10 minutes at high pressure, then relase the pressure in accordance with the instructions for your particular pressure cooker.
- When it has cooled just a fraction, whizz it with a hand-held blender, taste it and adjust the seasoning.
- Serve with a hunk of fresh bread – and enjoy!
Quick Notes
You can adjust the proportions of the various veg in this to suit your own tastes. More sweet potato will give you a thicker soup.
Preparation time (duration): 10 minutes
Cooking time (duration): 10 minutes
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): 8
Meal type: lunch
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This is my latest variation on the ever-faithful no-knead recipe. It makes a great breakfast bread and a ’spreaded’ slice makes a good snack for school, or for those days when you have to go straight from school to a club of some sort.
The basics of the recipe are the same as the original with a number of additions. As before, you will need a large mixing bowl and a lined 9″ square (or equivalent volume) tin.
Recipe: Fruit Loaf
Ingredients
- 540g / 1lb 3½oz bread flour
- 1/2 tsp active dried yeast
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 50g / 2oz soft dark brown sugar
- 175g / 6oz mixed dried vine fruits (with or without citrus peel as you wish)
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- 360ml/13floz hot water
- 2 tbsp flavourless vegetable oil
Instructions
- Mix all the dry ingredients together very thoroughly, ensuring any lumps in the sugar are completely broken up and everything is evenly distributed.
- Add the water and the oil.
- Mix thoroughly with your hand until you have an evenly wet, gloopy heap in your bowl. If the dough is at all dryish, add a little more warm water and mix thoroughly until it goes suitably gloopy. You’re very unlikely to make it too wet, but if it’s too dry you just won’t get a good rise.
- Scrape your hand clean and cover the bowl with cling film.
- Leave on the worktop in the kitchen to rise for at least 6 hours, preferably nearer 8 hours. Do not put it anywhere like an airing cupboard. It’s meant to rise very slowly.
- When it has almost filled the mixing bowl, tip it out onto a well-floured board and scrape out the bowl.
- Fold it around until you have a less sticky surface to handle, then flatten it out into a rough rectangle.
- Fold one end in to the middle, then fold the other end over the top and shape your loaf for its tin.
- Pop it in, cover it with oiled cling film and leave it overnight to rise, again just sitting in the kitchen, not anywhere near a heat source.
- In the morning, pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 7/ 220C/200C fan ovens, bake for 25 minutes then carefully and gently remove from the tin, take off the lining paper and pop the loaf back in the oven for another 5 minutes until the base sounds hollow when tapped with a knuckle.
- Leave to cool on a rack for as long as you can resist the smell. It really does need about 10 minutes before you can cut it without mashing the whole loaf!
Quick Notes
The smell of this baking before breakfast gets everybody downstairs in double quick time: always useful on a school morning!
Preparation time (duration): 20 minutes plus about 16 hours rising time
Cooking time (duration): 30 minutes
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): 12+
Meal type: breakfast
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This is the version you make when you need a dessert which you can throw together then stuff in the fridge and forget about overnight until you need it! It still tastes good and, just like the original, it matures over a day or two in the fridge. This version requires no cooking at all! It is vegetarian, but not vegan as sponge fingers/boudoir biscuits have egg in them.
Recipe: High-Speed Tiramisu
Ingredients
- 1 box Alpro Dairy-free Custard
- 1 box Silken Tofu (either Morinu or Blue Dragon)
- about 1/2 a packet of boudoir biscuits (also sold as sponge fingers)
- 2 tbsps Amaretto
- 4 tbsps Tia Maria
- 6 tbsps very strong coffee
- 1 tsp Coffee Drop
- 5 tbsps icing sugar, sieved
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 tsps lemon juice
- Kinnerton’s chocolate for decoration
Instructions
- Cover the base of your glass dish with a layer of sponge fingers, cutting them up to fit.
- Mix the liqueurs and the coffee together and apply half of the mixture to the fingers, soaking them thoroughly.
- Whizz (or beat with a hand mixer) the tofu until it is as smooth as you can get it.
- Beat in the custard, the vanilla, the lemon juice and the sieved icing sugar.
- Spread half of this over the layer of soaked sponge fingers.
- Cover this with another layer of sponge fingers. Be gentle or you will make them disappear at the edges! You want the layers to be visible.
- Soak the new layer of sponge fingers with the rest of the coffee mixture.
- Finish off with the rest of the custard mixture. Level it out and pop it in the fridge overnight.
- Just before serving, grate some Kinnerton’s chocolate over the top.
Quick Notes
Be careful when constructing the layers. They look good in a glass dish, but you do need to be gentle when making them.
Preparation time (duration): 20 minutes + overnight chilling
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): 8(ish)
Meal type: dessert
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I have been playing around with the no-knead recipe over the last few weeks and here is one of the best variations so far. This is by far the easiest and cheapest way to have delicious seed bread for toast and sandwiches. My kids love the toasty taste of the seeds on the outside.
Folllow the original no-knead recipe.
Before you tip out the dough to knock it back, sprinkle a small scattering of sunflower seeds over the board/table you use on top of your usual sprinkle of flour. Then tip out the dough and sprinkle another sparse layer of seeds over the sticky surface. Fold in the ends as usual and form the dough into baking shape. Put the dough into its tin or onto its tray, then take a last small handful of seeds and stick them over the surface by gently poking them into/onto the dough. Don’t worry that some of them fall off, they will be covered by the rising dough and incorporated into it.
Leave to rise as usual for about 5 hours, then bake as per the original recipe.
The result is delicious, especially when eaten fresh and warm from the oven. The toasty roasty sunflower seeds on the top are irresistible! Try a hunk of this with a slice of ham and a dollop of pear chutney; or for dipping into a bowl of homemade pea soup. Yum!
If you want a change, try pumpkin seeds instead of sunflower seeds, or a mixture of the two. Also delicious!
I’ve been using this stuff for a couple of years now and I should have done a review before now… so here we go.
Kinnerton launched as a nut-free chocolate manufacturer some years back. This remains their main line and they have quite a number of different easter eggs which are made in their dedicated nut free factory. However, they also produce a bar of chocolate which is nut free, dairy free, gluten free and egg free. It’s vegan and absolutely safe to eat.
This isn’t a gourmet chocolate. Back in my milk-eating days, I tasted better. This one has 55% cocoa solids, so it can’t compete with the 70 – 75% cocoa ones. However, when you can’t eat chocolate at all, I can assure you that this is quite good enough to eat straight off the bar. When cooking and making delicious desserts, this stuff is your friend. It’s wonderful to be able to make lovely chocolatey things which are completely safe.
When Easter comes around, Kinnerton make a dairy-free egg each year. This year it was a “Tiggeriffic” egg, but things seem to change from year to year. I’ve found more of the eggs on sale in Sainsbury’s than anywhere else. The Kinnerton’s website carries details of all their products.
Buying Kinnerton’s chocolate is relatively easy in that it’s in the supermarkets rather than being the preserve of the health food shops. I have found bars of Kinnerton’s chocolate in all of the major supermarkets, usually shelved with the special diet things. The price varies considerably. At the moment, Morrison’s are the cheapest at £1.06. The rest are much of a muchness ranging from Sainsbury’s at £1.19, throughTesco’s at £1.20 to Waitrose where it varies between £1.22 and about £1.28. I keep an eye on the prices and whenever special offers come up, I buy in bulk!
This is a delicious and really easy pud for a party. It’s loosely based on Eton mess – with the emphasis on loosely! This travels well before it’s assembled, so it works very well as a dessert to take to a party.
Recipe: Chocolate Scrumble
Ingredients
- 1 quantity of chocolate sauce (see previous recipe)
- 4 meringues (you can use broken nests)
- 2 Waitrose Double Choc Muffins (gluten and dairy free)
- 400 g raspberries
Instructions
- Break up the meringues and the muffins into bitesize lumps.
- Wash and check over the raspberries.
- Layer up the ingredients in a large bowl.
- Start with a layer of meringue, then follow with a layer of raspberries, one of muffin chunks and a thick drizzle of chocolate sauce.
- Repeat until you run out of stuff.
- You can serve this two different ways. Either you can layer it in a glass bowl and leave it like that with the last layer of chocolate sauce; or you can give it all a gentle stir before you give it the final drizzle of sauce.
Quick Notes
I took this to a friend’s barbecue and it vanished like snow off a hedge. Everyone demolished it with most coming back for seconds and all the children for thirds. A large bowlful lasted a total of 10 minutes!
Preparation time (duration): 5 minutes
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): 12+
Meal type: dessert
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This really is unbelievably easy and absolutely delicious. It is a crucial ingredient in the next recipe for my take on Eton Mess. (Yes, I know the original doesn’t have any chocolate in it, but this is good and tons better than soya cream.)
Recipe: Super-delicious chocolatey sauce
Ingredients
- 2 bars of Kinnerton’s chocolate (I know it isn’t fantastic chocolate, but it’s the only one out there which is guaranteed free from contamination and in cooking it’s very good.)
- 1 box of Alpro Soya Cream
Instructions
- Shake the Soya Cream and pour it into a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan.
- Before unwrapping them, bang the bars of chocolate against the edge of a table or worktop to smash them into little pieces.
- Drop the chocolate bits into the cream and heat everything gently, stirring frequently until smooth and delicious.
- You can use this hot poured over a chocolate sponge pudding, or cold in my chocolate Eton Mess variation.
Quick Notes
The sauce transports really well. Just remember to put it in a box which seals completely! This way, you can take your own sauce to a party.
Cooking time (duration): 10 minutes
Diet type: Dairy-free
Meal type: dessert
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This is a great lunchbox cake, but it also looks good on a tea table with lemon icing drizzled over it. If you don’t particularly like the texture of banana cake, this one should suit you because the proportion of banana to other things is quite low. It’s a lovely fruit cake and it’s very easy to make.
Recipe: Spiced Banana Bread
Ingredients
- 2 ½ oz / 75g Tomor
- 1 egg
- 4oz / 100g caster sugar
- 5 oz / 125g self-raising flour
- ½ tsp ground ginger
- ½ tsp mixed spice
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 2 ripe bananas
- 4oz / 100g mixed dried fruit (I use sultanas, dates, glacé cherries and currants. Chop up the cherries and dates.)
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to Gas Mark 3 / 170°C
- Line a 2lb loaf tin.
- Cream the Tomor, and sugar together until light and fluffy. I do this in my food processor, but it works just as well with a hand held mixer.
- Sieve in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices.
- Whizz or beat in the egg and the broken up bananas until smooth.
- Either stir in the dried fruit, or pulse it in the food processor. If you whizz it, you’ll mash it all up.
- Tip into the tin and bake for about 1 hour.
- It’s cooked when you can press it with your fingertips and it just springs back. You can do the skewer test, but remember that if you hit a piece of fruit the skewer will always come out sticky.
- Cool the cake on a rack and when completely cool, you can drizzle thick lemon water icing over it in zig-zags if you wish.
Quick Notes
This has gone down very well wherever I’ve taken it.
Preparation time (duration): 10 minutes
Cooking time (duration): about 1 hour
Diet type: Dairy-free
Number of servings (yield): 12
Meal type: dessert
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Well, where did the last few weeks go to? After all the lovely bank holidays and resulting four day weeks, reality is back for a while and I’ve been tackling the issue of how to give my children a sweet treat in their lunchboxes. Everything in school has to be completely nut-free as there is a child with a severe nut allergy in Reception. That rules out all the commercial cereal bars and quite a number of other bars and biscuits too. Chocolate bars and biscuits are not allowed in school, so it would have to be home-baked even were it not very tricky to find commercial dairy-free treats which would fit the bill.
To try to fill the gap I have produced dairy-free versions of a couple of my mother-in-law’s recipes. These are Australian in origin and came to me in the cup and teaspoon measures which are usual there. The proportions work perfectly, so you don’t need to bother with weighing the dry stuff, just use a set of measuring cups.
Recipe: Ginger Coconut Slices
Ingredients
- 2 oz / 60g Pure sunflower spread
- 1 tbsp golden syrup
- 1 cup self-raising flour
- 1½tsp ground ginger
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup dessicated coconut
- 1 egg Lemon Icing
- 1 cup icing sugar
- 1 oz / 30g Pure sunflower spread
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp grated lemon zest
- 1 tsp hot water
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 4 / 180°C / 350°F
- Melt the Pure sunflower spread and golden syrup over a low heat.
- Sift the flour into a bowl and add the ginger, sugar and dessicated coconut.
- Lightly beat the egg and add it to the dry ingredients.
- Pour in the melted ingredients and combine well.
- Press into a well-greased tin. (Oil your hands as it’s very sticky.)
- Bake for 25 – 30 minutes.
- Leave until cool, then ice and cut into squares.
- Sift the icing sugar into a mixing bowl.
- Combine with the Pure spread, lemon juice and zest and the hot water.
- Stir until it all looks smooth, then spread on the cake.
Quick Notes
This keeps for up to a week in an airtight box.
Preparation time (duration): 10 minutes
Cooking time (duration): 25 – 30 minutes
Diet type: Dairy free
Number of servings (yield): 12 – 15
Meal type: dessert
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