Smoky Vegetable Slice

This is a dish based on the classic Australian recipe for Zucchini (Courgette) Slice, which I first saw on the blog Fig Jam and Lime Cordial. I've used Celia's version several times, so usually follow her guidelines for quantities of ingredients and cooking instructions, although a bit more or less of any of the vegetables doesn't make much difference. The Zucchini Slice is very similar to a frittata, but the addition of SR flour and oil makes it sturdier and more filling. It's excellent when eaten as a main meal with salads, or as a picnic food.

I made this version in an attempt to use up some vegetables which were lingering uneaten in the fridge. A sudden rise in temperature, after a spell of wet, cold weather meant that we couldn't face hot meals for a few days. Instead of courgettes (or a mix of courgettes and carrots, as Celia uses), I used equal quantities of grated sweet potato and broccoli.

Ingredients
150g sweet potato, peeled then coarsely grated
150g broccoli
1 small onion
100g smoked cheddar, grated
100g smoked bacon pieces
5 eggs
125ml sunflower oil
130g SR flour
plenty of black pepper to season, plus a little salt if desired (both the cheese and bacon will be salty)

Method
Preheat oven to 190C, 175C fan, and line a 23cm (9") round baking tin, or a 20cm (8") square one, with baking paper.
Fry the bacon pieces gently until just cooked through.
Blanch the broccoli florets in boiling salted water for about 3 minutes, then drain, rinse in cold water and allow to dry off. Slice the stems thinly and chop the florets into small pieces.
Finely chop the onion.
Put all the vegetables into a large bowl, add the cheese and bacon.
Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables, then make a well in the centre and break in the eggs and add the oil.

Mix everything together until no dry flour is visible, adding pepper and salt (if using) as you do so.
Transfer the mixture to the baking tin, level the surface and bake for about 40 minutes until golden and firm.
Best served at room temperature. You'll get 4-8 portions, depending on what else you are serving.

This was a really tasty version of a vegetable slice. The cheese and bacon added a subtle smoky flavour which we both really liked, and the sweet potato and broccoli made a good combination of vegetables.

Spanish Panellets

The word 'panellet' means 'little bread' in Catalan Spanish, although these little cookies are more often described as a type of marzipan. They are eaten in the Catalan area of Spain (around Barcelona) to celebrate All Saints' Day (1st November). I made them for the Formula 1 Foods challenge, at Caroline Makes, to celebrate the Spanish F1 Grand Prix taking place in Barcelona this weekend

 

There seem to be many different ways of making panellets, some more complicated than others and although they are traditionally rolled in pine nuts, modern cooks often use cocoa, coconut, or slices of glace fruit to decorate them too. Whether or not to add mashed potato or sweet potato is also an issue; it's said to make the cookies moister but my guess it was originally used to act as a cheap 'padding' for the more expensive sugar and almonds.

 

The original recipe I found, in a book on Spanish cooking in the local library, made flat biscuits with a few pine nuts or pistachios sprinkled on top, but it didn't take much online research to show that panellets were usually rolled into balls, logs or crescents.  After reading many recipes I decided to go with this one, because it worked with the small quantities that I wanted to use, was simple to do (it didn't use boiling sugar syrup, for instance) and had lots of helpful illustrations. Despite that, I think I made my cookies a little larger than they should have been.

 

I had to adapt the recipe a little, of course. Firstly, I added the zest of a lemon, as many recipes seemed to do this and I had bought a lemon before deciding on the final recipe. The dough was quite wet before adding any egg, so I only added the yolk. I used the remaining lightly beaten egg white to brush the tops of the pine nut covered cookies (rather than use another egg yolk), and because the cookies were so damp, they needed 20 minutes cooking at 180C to get a light golden colour. I didn't add the grilling stage as I was happy with the colour after baking. I ran out of pine nuts after 14 cookies, so the last few were rolled in desiccated coconut.

The colour inside the panellets was quite vivid due to the bright orange of the sweet potato, and the cookies were very moist and soft in texture. The lemon gave an extra lift to the overall flavour of sweet marzipan.

 

These were more like balls of soft marzipan than cookies, and more suitable as after-dinner sweetmeats than cookies to have with a mid-morning cuppa! When eaten as part of the All Saints celebrations they are often served with sweet white wine. Sweet potatoes and chestnuts are also traditionally eaten during the celebrations.

 

Sweet Potato and White Chocolate Cake

 I don't know if Jibber Jabber, the host of this month's We Should Cocoa challenge had a premonition of what was to come on Week 8 of The Great British Bake Off, but after a week of magnificent 3-D vegetable cakes which were also non-dairy, I'm sure that anything containing vegetables that I can bake will be an anti-climax. Fortunately I don't have to make a non-dairy cake or turn it into a novelty cake, and even more fortunately, I must include chocolate in some form to take part in We Should Cocoa. I've gone for substance over style (unlike Ruth) but this cake really was a little too substantial. I could be like Christine, and claim that the 'bread-pudding like' texture was intentional, but I really don't think that's how it should have been.

I scoured the internet for recipes which went beyond the usual carrots, courgettes or beetroot and in the end decided to use sweet potato. I also decided to use white chocolate, as most dark chocolate vegetable cakes I've tried lose the vegetables under the intensity of the chocolate flavour. I really wanted to get the full effect from the sweet potato. I used this recipe from The Good Food Channel, adding the zest of an orange, as suggested in the 'Tips' part of the recipe.

I know I've said in the past that I was never again going to make a recipe which melted white chocolate, but here the chocolate was melted with the oil, so what could go wrong? It didn't go drastically wrong, but the white chocolate still didn't melt easily and I really had to work hard to amalgamate it with the oil. The only other change I made was to finely grate the sweet potato, as I don't have a food processor which would reduce raw vegetables to a purée

The cake rose well in the oven and I tested it with a heat sensitive probe at the end of cooking time, and it appeared cooked. However, once out of the oven it collapsed quite a bit, to the extent that the sides of the cake collapsed inwards too. I'm not sure if it was undercooked or if there was too much liquid or raising agent, or whether it was just the addition of the chocolate, but the collapse made the cooled cake quite dense and pudding-y. Luckily, the flavour was excellent, although very sweet for our taste, so after the first taste I added a drizzle of 85% chocolate over the top of the cake. The flavour was predominantly of the orange zest; as usual the white chocolate added vanilla notes and the sweet potato seemed to add colour and texture rather than much flavour.

I'm quite disappointed that the vegetable cakes I've made recently have been heavy. I use a carrot cake recipe which always produces a light cake, so perhaps I should just vary the vegetables in that, rather than trying to find different recipes.

We Should Cocoa was started by Chele from Chocolate Teapot and Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog, and the rules can be found here. This month, the theme of pairing chocolate with vegetables was chosen by guest host, Jibber Jabber, who is accepting entries by Linky this month, and will do the usual round up at the end of the month.

Sweet Potato Brownies

Don't stop reading yet! The name isn't exactly inspiring, but these brownies are really, really good!

This is a Dan Lepard recipe for brownies with a lower fat and sugar content than usual. Some of the butter and sugar is replaced by sweet potato purée, which helps bind the mixture, add moisture and keep the fat and sugar emulsified, as Dan explains in his Guardian column.

They aren't totally suitable for the low saturated fat diet which CT is following, but they certainly make a great treat for him, without overloading on butter. They are really aimed at someone trying to cut down their calorie intake, particularly from excessive fat and the empty calories from sugar.

This is a more fiddly recipe than usual, as I had to plan ahead and bake a sweet potato. I did this in the oven, as I wasn't sure if a microwaved potato would be the same - I assumed the potato would lose some moisture as it cooked in the oven, but might not lose as much in the m/wave. I started with a potato weighing around 400g and used about 2/3 of it in the recipe. The only change I made to the recipe was to use toasted hazelnuts instead of pecans, so that FB could eat the brownies.

After following the recipe exactly, I found it took a few minutes longer than stated to cook the tray of brownie batter -  it was liquid in the centre at 25 minutes, but by 30 minutes I was worried that it was overcooked, as it seemed so solid. So the correct end point is something to watch for closely.

The brownie was moist and dense and had just the texture that I like in a good brownie. There is no way that you would guess that it contained sweet potato, or that it was lower in fat and sugar. There were a few holes in the cooked brownie, rather than an even texture, but this doesn't spoil the flavour!

These will be made again, but only as an occasional treat for CT - he needs to stick to the oil based cakes.