Garibaldi Biscuits

Due to their appearance Garibaldi biscuits have always been known as 'squashed fly' biscuits in my family but they taste much nicer than their name implies! Relatively simple to make too, if you can manage pastry then you'll manage these!

Garibaldi Biscuits
Ingredients
100 g plain flour (I used half plain, half wholemeal spelt)
50 g butter
1 tsp apple juice concentrate
a little water
a generous amount of currants

Recipe
1. Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles bread crumbs.
2. Add the apple juice concentrate and enough water to form a dough.
3. Chill the dough in the fridge for half an hour or so.
4. Divide the mixture into two. Roll one half out as thinly as possible in a rectangular shape and transfer to a greased baking sheet. (N.B. Use a baking sheet with no sides so that you can roll over it with the rolling pin.)
5. Sprinkle generous amounts of currants over the rolled out dough.
6. Roll out the second half of the dough to roughly the same size and thickness.
7. Using a pastry brush wet the edges of the dough on the baking sheet with water.
8. Place the second piece of dough on top of the first. Roll with a rolling pin until the currants are just showing through.
9. Score with a knife into rectangular pieces (but don't cut through).
10. Bake for fifteen minutes at gas mark 5 (375 deg F / 190 deg C) until golden brown.
11. Cool and then break along the score marks.

Sugar-free Jam - my first attempt!

A lot of the recipes call for use of sugar-free jam. I've been buying this but really I'd like to make my own. So after searching on the internet I found a few recipes and tried this one out. I have to say it was much quicker and easier than making 'normal' jam. The resulting jam wasn't as sweet as the shop brought sugar-free jams so I think next time I'd add more juice concentrate. I was lucky enough to find a lot of mirabelles (small, sweet, yellow plums) growing for free in the hedgerow so made the jam from these. However, I'm sure you could use any variety of sweet plums if you don't have mirabelles!

Sugar-Free Mirabelle Jam
Ingredients
900 g mirabelles (or other plums)
90 ml apple juice concentrate
120 ml liquid pectin (I used Certo)
Recipe
1.  Stone and chop fruit. Place in pan with apple juice concentrate.
2. Simmer for ten minutes.
3. Boil hard for ten minutes.
4. Add the liquid pectin and pot in sterilised jam jars.

Fruity Bread

We've been making our own bread for years now as it tastes so much nicer than the supermarket stuff! My hubby likes bread for breakfast and I'll have it occassionally too so this is a recipe I often make for our 'breakfast bread'. It's open to endless variation of the ingredients - different flours, fruit, nuts, spices, etc. A lot of recipes use sugar or honey to mix with the yeast and liquid but you don't really need it in my experience.

Cinnamon and Sultana Plait

Ingredients
500 g plain flour
500 g wholemeal flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp quick yeast (I use Doves farm's one)
2 tsp cinnamon
lots of sultana's - as much as you fancy
1 egg
approx 500 ml of warm liquid (I use half water/half milk)

Recipe
1. Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl (including the yeast and sultanas).
2. Add the egg.
3. Begin to add the liquid, mixing well, until you have a soft, sticky dough that comes away from the bowl. You may need more or less liquid depending on your flour so don't just add all the liquid at once!
4. Knead well for 5-10 mins.
5. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for approx two hours until doubled in size.
6. Grease a large baking sheet.
7. Knock back dough and knead for a few minutes.
8. Divide into three and form a long 'sausage' from each.
9. Put on baking tray and plait to form your bread. Dust with plain flour (if you wish).
10. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise for approx an hour.
11. Preheat oven to gas 6 (200 deg C / 400 deg F).
12. Bake loaf for approx 40 mins til crusty. If in doubt insert a skewer to check it's not still 'doughy' inside.

Roast Gammon

I guess we don't often realise how much sugar can be in savoury things too. For example, we had a gammon joint for cooking but a lot of recipes call for a sweet glaze. It does taste nice with a sweet glaze so I wanted to create a sugar-free one and here it is! The gammon tasted lovely so it's well worth it.


Roast Gammon
Ingredients
1 kg gammon
90 ml apple juice
60 ml date syrup (I used Meridian's)
1 tsp mustard
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sherry (or other alcohol)
Pinch cayenne pepper

Recipe
1. Put the gammon in a saucepan of cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer for half an hour (or fifteen minutes per lb if you have a different weight gammon).
2. Meanwhile put all the rest of the ingredients in a saucepan and simmer til reduced to approx one third.
3. Preheat oven to gas 9 (240 deg C / 475 deg F).
4. Carefully remove skin from gammon and coat with half of glaze mixture.
5. Put in oven and immediately reduce temperature to gas 4 (180 deg C/ 350 deg F). Roast for 35 mins (or ten mins per lb plus an additional 15 mins), basting half way through with rest of glaze and any juices from the meat.
6. Leave the gammon to rest, covered with foil, for fifteen minutes. Then serve.

Mmmm.. Chocolate cake!

Or, more specifically, sugar-free chocolate courgette cake! I know, it sounds a little strange but it is yummy! I adapted a recipe from Nigel Slater and it's a great way to use up courgette.

Chocolate Courgette Cake
Ingredients
200 g butter
4 tbsp sugar-free jam (I used apricot)
2 eggs
150 g courgette (approx one medium size one)
200 g plain flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
60 g walnuts
80 g sultanas

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to gas mark 4 (180 deg C/ 350 deg F) and grease a 2 lb loaf tin.
2. Cream the butter and jam. Add the eggs.
3. Grate the courgette and squeeze the excess moisture out before adding to the mixture.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
5. Put in prepared tin and bake for about an hour. (N.B. It seems to be a very moist cake but a skewer should come out clean when the cake is cooked.)

Picture to follow shortly...

More pickle!

Ok, some more pickle! Both me and my other half love bread and butter pickle. For those of you who haven't heard of it it's a pickle made from cucumbers and is for eating with bread and butter (not made from it!). It tastes especially good with some strong cheddar too. It normally contains sugar but having looked up a few recipes for pickling cucumbers I know that you can still preserve them without the sugar due to the vinegar and salt content. So I thought I'd use the normal recipe for it but omit the sugar. The recipe is courtesy of my mum this time!


Bread and Butter Pickle
Ingredients
1 large cucumber
1 red onion, sliced very thinly
1 green pepper, deseeded and cut into strips
1 1/2 tbsp coarse sea salt
300 ml white wine vinegar
50 ml apple juice concentrate (original recipe contains 275g caster sugar)
1 tbsp mustard seed
1 tsp celery seed or dill seed (I didn't have any so skipped this!)
5 cm stick of cinnamon
6 allspice berries
Pinch of cayenne pepper

Recipe
1. Peel cucumbers (if you wish) and slice thinly. Mix with onion, pepper and salt in a bowl.
2. Sit a plate on top of the bowl, weigh it down and leave in the fridge overnight.
3. Drain the vegetables and rinse under running water until they don't taste too salty.
4. Heat the vinegar, juice concentrate and spices and simmer for a few minutes.
5. Add the vegetables, stir once and bring to a bare simmer.
6. Put into hot, sterilised jars and put lids on.

Tastes better after maturing a while so leave it for a few weeks if you can! I haven't tried it yet but will soon as we have some nice cheddar in the fridge that would go perfectly....

Finally... some chocolate!

I wouldn't have thought it possible but this weekend we had chocolate moose for pudding! It was a rather unusual recipe and I was slightly dubious but it was very nice. It had a lovely smooth texture and did taste chocolatey. Nice time though I really have to use a much riper banana as you could taste that it wasn't that ripe! The recipe is vegan but we added a teaspoon of honey to make it a little sweeter (due to the aforementioned unripe banana!). Makes enough for two people

Chocolate Mousse
Ingredients
1 ripe avocado
1 ripe banana
1 tbsp cocoa powder
flavouring of choice - vanilla essence, grated orange rind, peppermint, etc

Recipe
1. Blend all ingredients together.
2. Serve and eat!

The recipe was from Star Khechara's "Holistic Beauty Book".

Pickle

Well yesterday the neighbour came over and asked if I wanted a rather large bag of runner beans as they were rather overwhelmed by the production of their plants! How could I refuse? And I had wanted to try out this recipe for a pickle after I saw it on TV. Pickles and chutneys often use sugar in so have been off the list for us. However, I quite like having some with some bread and cheese so I'm looking forward to trying this one. It's maturing for a bit now (although I don't think it needs to according to the recipe) and I shall report back soon....

Mixed Vegetable Pickle (from "The Edible Garden" series on BBC with Alys Fowler)

Ingredients
450 ml cider vinegar
50 ml apple juice concentrate
2 tsp salt
450 g green beans, strung and sliced (I used a mix of runner beans, yellow courgette and red pepper)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 habenero chilli, deseeded and sliced (I skipped this as didn't have any!)
5 cm piece cinnamon bark
2 bay leaves
Small sprig of winter savory
Pinch of black peppercorns

Recipe
1. Mix the vinegar and fruit juice concentrate in a bowl. Add more juice or vinegar to taste.
2. Add herbs/spices to vinegar mix and let everything marinate.
3. Chop the vegetables and add to the vinegar mix.
4. Put in a clean jar, squashing the vegetables in and ensuring they are covered with the vinegar mix. If not then add more vinegar/juice concentrate.

They can be eaten straight away but do improve with age. I couldn't fit mine in one jar so had to use two. I tried to share the spices/herbs between them so hopefully it's worked! Here's a picture of the finished product.

Day two - cookies and cake!

Well, to keep us going I tried a couple of recipes on day two and I have to say they have both vanished pretty quickly now! So quickly that I'm afraid there are no photos but I'll try and remember next time...

Firstly some cookies, the original recipe was courtesy of this excellent blog but I have adapted it slightly. These tasted great! Slightly less sweet then perhaps we're used to but the jam and the fruit does make it quite sweet enough. I took the cookies round a friends house and no-one even realised they hadn't any sugar in! I also made another version with ground ginger, sultanas and spelt flour and these were good too.

Walnut and Sultana Cookies

Ingredients

• 100 g butter
• 3 tbsp sugar free jam (I used St Dalfour apricot jam)
• 1 beaten egg
• 50 g ground almonds
• 50 g sultanas
• 30g chopped walnuts
• 100 g wholemeal flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp mixed spice

Recipe
1. Cream butter and jam together.
2. Add the egg and beat well.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients to make a sticky dough.
4. Spoon dollups of the mixture onto a baking sheet (I made twelve cookies) and flatten slightly with a fork.
5. Bake at gas mark 4 (180 deg C/ 350 deg F) for 15-20 mins til golden.


And I wanted something to take on a picnic to share. So I found this recipe for a fruit cake (from Rose Elliot's "New Complete Vegetarian" cookbook). This was really good too and surprisingly sweet, I don't think anyone would realise that it has no sugar in. I think it would make an excellent Christmas cake, perhaps with some pretty dried fruit put on the top before you cook it. The cake went down really well at the picnic and a couple of people asked for the recipe so it must have been good! The cake is also vegan.


Fruit Cake

Ingredients

• 225 g dates
• 275 ml water
• 450 g mixed dried fruit (I used sultanas and apricots)
• 175 g plain wholemeal flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• grated rind of one orange or lemon (I hadn't any so just used a dash of lemon juice!)
• 40 g ground almonds
• 4 tbsp orange juice (again, I hadn't any so used apple juice)
• a few flaked almonds

Recipe

1. Preheat oven to gas 3 (160 deg C / 325 deg F). Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin.
2. Chop dates and add to saucepan with the water. Cook over a low heat til soft. Then remove from heat and mash to break up.
3. Add all the remaining ingredients (except for the flaked almonds) and mix well. Spoon into the tin and sprinkle the flaked almonds on top.
4. Bake for 1 1/2 hours until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
5. Cool slightly in tin and then turn out onto cooling rack.

Welcome!

Following a sudden realisation that we're eating way too many sweet things my hubby and I have decided to have a refined sugar-free August. So I've set up this blog to record how it goes and the recipes that we try.

The rules are - no refined sugar. To us that means no caster sugar, icing sugar, brown sugar, golden syrup, etc when we're cooking. Also it means not buying (and eating!) anything which contains glucose in it's various forms.  We've decided that honey and fructose are allowed although we shall try and keep these down too.

I think the most difficult challenge for me will be chocolate - I always have a piece (or two, or three...) of dark chocolate after dinner. It'll be a hard habit to break! For my OH I think the challenge is more to do with snacking as sweet things (such as biscuits, cakes) are so easy to snack on.

I hope you like the recipes and always appreciate any ideas you may have!