Pie, princess pony and hot cross buns

The week started with a pie. I'm not much of a pastry maker really (I'm more of a bread person) but I occasionally have the whim to make a pie. The pastry recipe I use is Delia Smith's cheese pastry from the turkey flan with leeks and cheese recipe in the first of her Christmas books. That pie is known as Boxing Day pie in this house and the pastry is for the underneath crust but it works just as well as a lid too. The inside of this pie was Sunday's leftover roast chicken dinner and gravy. H10, R8 and I ate the exclamation mark and the right hand end. Brian ate the P, the I and the E and everything around it. Men love pies.

The postman arrived with a big surprise this week too. H10 avidly enters all of the competitions in her Pony magazine and this time she won. She had to complete a tie-breaker which was to say what she would call a book about Exmoor ponies. Her answer was 'Exmoor the merrier' and her prize was this bright pink Katie Price Equestrian rug for Itsy.

These two spend lots of time together and are best friends. Now they are even starting to dress alike. Neither has heard of Katie Price but both think the rug is very lovely.

It's definitely a rug fit for a pony princess.

Itsy looks very glamorous in it.

I think she likes the monogram!

It's hot itchy work being a pony princess.

That's better!

Today is Good Friday so I made some hot cross buns in honour of the day (and to continue my slow but sure progress in baking all of the recipes in the River Cottage Bread book). R8 doesn't like dried fruit so instead I added 100g of dark chocolate chips and orange (in the form of a tablespoon of my recently made marmalade) to the mixture, forgetting that the warm milk I added at the same time would melt the chocolate.

What we had instead was dark chocolate and orange hot cross buns. Delicious hot from the oven spread with butter and homemade marmalade. Happy Easter!

Raspberry chocolate crumble

I'm a huge fan of raspberries. I think they are my favourite fruit and we're fortunate here in having the conditions they love. A few years ago I planted some Glen Ample canes and now they romp around the garden like weeds. The back vegetable garden is divided up into raised beds with paths in between but this hasn't put off the raspberries which happily pop under the paths and reappear in neighbouring beds. In fact I've just noticed that they've popped up in the small polytunnel which is right over the othe side from where they were originally planted.

Sometimes we get a glut of the tart scarlet berries and I fill plastic boxes and hide them in the freezer. I found one on Sunday and immediately thought 'crumble!'

I first encountered raspberry crumble in the concourse at high school in the arms of my friend Jane who had just made it in home economics. I didn't get a taste of that one because she took it home on the bus to her lucky Mum and Dad but I've been making it ever since. On Sunday, though, I took inspiration from a tart I ate at another friend's house. Nicola's wasn't home made but it was delicious - a crisp chocolate case studded with raspberries (and if you want to take that short cut, you'll find it in the Tesco Finest frozen dessert section.)

Anyway I combined the two. I just made my basic crumble recipe (six tablespoons of flour, three of butter, three of caster sugar, all rubbed in together, adjust individual components until it's right) and added a generous tablespoon of cocoa powder (Tesco Value fat reduced is cheap and excellent.)

Sprinkle it over the raspberries (I don't bother to thaw the fruit first if it's frozen) and bake in a moderately hot oven (I was cooking a pasta bake at gas mark 5 at the time so this went in on the shelf below).

Bake until the top is just beginning to brown and the fruit is heated through and just beginning to collapse into a fragrant juicy muddle. 

Serve with custard, cream, ice cream or all three. Eat the leftovers for breakfast the following morning with plain yoghurt. The chocolate crumble was a huge hit and I'm thinking that a pear version might be a lovely autumnal Sunday dinner treat.

Hand over the chocolate and nobody will get hurt...

Having just inhaled a Mars bar I got to thinking that really, for all chocolate bar makers jump through hoops to make tempting tasty treats for us chocolate lovers, the originals are still the best. Roald Dahl once said this on Breakfast TV and, as usual, he was right on the money.

You see the Mars Bar was invented in Slough in 1932 by an American called Forrest Mars and it’s still much the same now as it ever was. Just layers of nougat and caramel enrobed in thick milk chocolate with a thick swirly bit on the top. If you’re like me, you’ll nibble the chocolate off the sides and the ends, then off the bottom, next eating the nougat which leaves you with the caramel bit still stuck to the thick chocolate topping. This is the best bit and you save it till last and then eat it much ecstatic rolling of eyes, finishing with much sucking and licking of one’s chocolaty fingers.

Please note: This CANNOT be done in public (unless you wish to encourage the attention of Men in White Coats) or in the vicinity of one’s spouse. They don’t like it. So, if in public, refrain from eating chocolate or choose something more delicate that can be nibbled daintily. Nibbled ? Chocolate? Who am I kidding. Eat. It. In. Private. Then you won’t have to share it either. Chocolate is NOT for sharing.)

Back to chocolate bar history. (If I had been allowed to study this at school I wouldn’t have got a D for my history O Level.)

The Marathon went on sale in 1930, although it was originally named in the US after the Mars family’s favourite horse who was called Snickers, it didn’t get that name in the UK until 1990 (when it also jumped from being the ninth most popular bar to being the third most popular.)

Then there’s Rowntree’s (now Nestle’s) Kit Kat which was launched in September 1935. They can make it two fingered, four fingered, chunky or orange-flavoured, but the concept is still the same as it was when it was first invented and it’s still the UK’s favourite choccy bar.

The wonderful Mr Mars also invented Maltesers in 1936, admittedly under the original name of ‘Energy Balls’ (no, I wouldn’t eat them under that name either) a glorious feat of chocolate technology (a trade secret) and still unsurpassed today.

Even good old Dairy Milk, which went on sale in 1905 is still such an iconic bar, despite the fact that it is just a slab of chocolate divided into cubes. It’s not the best chocolate in the world admittedly, but there’s something about that purple wrapper and the texture of the chocolate that makes it utterly soothingly brilliant. (Galaxy didn’t come along until 1956, and so will always have ‘Johnny Come Lately’ status, if only in my head.) And the Flake wasn’t far behind, being launched in 1920 after a Cadbury employee spotted, when filling chocolate moulds, that the chocolate which spilled over the sides of the mould folded down into flakes. What a genius!

And the wonderful child-pleasing Milky Way (the treat you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite) came along in 1923.

According to Wikipedia (which is where I checked all my facts): “A study reported by the BBC indicated that melting chocolate in one’s mouth produced an increase in brain activity and heart rate that was more intense than that associated with passionate kissing, and also lasted four times as long after the activity had ended.”

Apparently its wonderful ingredients delay old-age decline in brain function, are better at treating coughs better than cough medicine and have anti-diarrheal effects. It’s an anti-oxidant, can help lower blood pressure and can lower the chance of heart attack. This all, of course, relates to proper pedigree dark chocolate, not to Dairy Milk or Mars Bars which probably make you feel happy, but more than likely make you fat.

Incidentally, chocolate’s reputation as an aphrodisiac is unfounded, unless, of course, the object of your admiration gives you a gift of chocolate and then that might make you feel more kindly disposed towards him. (Husbands please note that I only said "might". Flowers might help too, but if we're on a diet and you give us chocolate, you're dead. If, however, we have PMT and you give us unsolicited chocolate then you are the Best Husband in the World. No, you won't be able to tell in advance, it's just the risk you must take.)

So what was it about the early part of the 20th century and in particular the 1930s which made them so utterly brilliant at inventing chocolate bars? There was a colossal global recession, of course, and fascist mutterings in Europe, so why in such dire circumstances would one’s minds turn to chocolate bars?

Who knows. But we’ve got a monstrous recession again and swine flu heading our way, so surely the time is ripe for a new chocolate invention?