Wench's Diets: This Week I Have Mostly Been Baking...

Custard Cookies.

Because both OH and I had promised to take food to work for different things, and because I didn't want to spend any extra money, we made these biscuits using stuff from the store cupboards. Original recipe here.  We swapped marg for butter, and sized up to make a few more.

INGREDIENTS:
icing sugar 100g
butter 200g
plain flour 165g
custard powder 70g

• Cream icing sugar & butter
• add flour & custard powder & mix to dough
• Form into a sausage shape & chill in plastic bag/ cling film for 2 hours
• remove from plastic and slice into 32 'rounds'
• place on baking tray & bake for about 10 minutes at 180

Verdict: Yum! Very Vanilla.

 Bacon and Cheese Muffins

Made in anticipation of a picnic that never happened, these ended up being breakfast, snackage, then breakfast again. They are great hot, bit taste really nice cold. Adapted from a Huge Furry Wotsit recipe to suit my available ingredients.
Makes 12.

100g streaky bacon, cut into 1cm pieces
1 red onion, finely diced
75g wholemeal strong flour
175g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
2 eggs
80g Flora cooking liquid
200ml plain yoghurt
1 tbsp finely chopped chives
100g smoked cheddar, grated

Heat the oven to 200C and line a patty tin with 12 paper cases.
I fried the bacon in a non-stick pan to avoid using extra oil and drained the excess grease on kitchen paper. I cooked the onion in the same pan, again, no extra oil, then set aside to cool.
I mixed together the flours, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Separately, I whisked the eggs, cooking liquid (which I got free from the Good Food Show) and yoghurt, stirred them into the flour mixture, then folded in the bacon, onion, some chives from my garden, and most of the cheese. I didn't use as much cheese as Hugh, as I didn't have much left from the Good Food Show, and thought the bacon would carry most of the salty flavour anyway.

After putting mixture into the muffin tin, I realized there wasn't much cheese to sprinkle on top, like Hugh said, but I did so anyway, just a few strands each. The muffins were baked for 18 minutes. They are cooked when you insert a stick into the centre of a muffin and it comes out clean.

Ooh la la, le Fromage Puant!

I've been watching Le Tour this week and feeling all nostalgic for all things French... I lived in Alsace for a year for the obligatory immersion-phase of my French degree, and it has been a favourite holiday destination for my family too. I know - almost makes us middle class!

Sadly, I've not been able to go back for leisure for years, but a little taster came to Northampton yesterday with the travelling French Market.

Blackadder was right: 'Sausage' is not in the first English dictionary written by Dr Samuel Johnson... but saucisson is. Not sure about cassoulet...

Crowds loving the Gallic ambience.

Beautiful tablets of savon de Marseille

Tempting cheeses!

I needed some cheese, so I decided to get it here, as quite frankly it was a bargain. I chose 3 good-size cheeses for a fiver: some creamy blue cheese, some Pont L'Eveque and a cheeky little Munster.

Ah... and thereby hangs a tale!

Munster is one of the smelliest cheeses in the world, but it is very nice. When I lived in France as an assistant in two schools, I and my fellow assistants in the town got invited to a cheese and wine evening where we got to try beaujolais nouveau and some lovely cheeses, including Munster. In fact Hugh loved it so much, one day he went out to buy some.

Now, in our flat, my room was next to the kitchen on the east side of the building, and Hugh and Reinhard had rooms on the west side. Hugh had been a bit concerned that his purchase of Munster cheese would offend us, Reinhard having already had a go at me for grating some emmental into a bowl he liked to use, because, you know, emmental - a very mild cheese - was to him incredibly stinky and washing up the bowl seemingly would fail to redeem it to its unstinky natural state. He was, to be frank, a bit nuts.

So Hugh decided not to put his Munster in the fridge.

The first I realised was when I woke up before the alarm on what was going to be a very warm day, the sun already piercing through the shutter blinds. So was something else.

A most bizarre, sweaty-feet-like gaseous odour. I swear there was a yellow mist in the room.

What Hugh had done, to be considerate to his fellow flatmates was to put the cheese in a bag and hang it out of the kitchen window - next to my bedroom window - where the sun's rays had worked their magic on the warm and ripe cheese.

Comme dit les francais - pew.