Orange and almond cake

Gluten-free cooking p.116
Serves 6-10 (depending on slice size)
Preparation / Cooking time: about 3h 30m all told (2h if using a pressure cooker)

This recipe comes from Michael Cox's Great Healthy Food: Gluten-Free (London: Carroll & Brown, 2000). It is delicious: soft and moist, with the strong orange flavour sitting very nicely alongside the subtler taste of almond. It is well worth the effort of the longish cooking time, though since the first two hours merely involve boiling the oranges, you aren't tethered to the kitchen for all that time.

A word of warning: this is one of those recipes where it makes a big difference if you leave it in too long. Check it on the dot of 60m to see if it is done (or five minutes earlier if your oven tends to be too hot); it may need a bit extra, but if it is ready at this stage it should be taken out immediately.

Ingredients
Butter for greasing
2 large oranges
6 eggs, medium-sized, separated
250g caster sugar [use less if you don't have a sweet tooth]
225g ground almonds [or a tad more if you reduce the sugar]

Cinnamon buns and marzipan buns

Makes 16–24 (or 8–12, if halving the amounts) 

Preparation / Cooking time: allow 2h 30m (in case the dough is slow to rise) 
Advance prep: needs 75g soft butter, so remember to take some out of fridge (also needs cold butter for dough, so don't take it all out!) 

The mammal doesn't often bake cakes and buns – apart from small, light scones to pack in the lunchbox – unless it is entertaining guests (so many calories, so little self-control). But every so often it throws caution to the wind and gives it a go. And when you come down to it, buns with sweet fillings are really just bigger scones ... aren't they? 

Anyway, the latest effort was actually sparked by noticing a link on the Guardian website to 'How to bake the perfect cinnamon buns': somehow, it seemed a bit more uplifting a topic than the evidence of skulduggery and disaster promised by most of the other articles. This then called to mind an existing recipe for enriched dough that we had made ages before and had worked reasonably well, so it seemed like a good idea to use the filling given in the Guardian recipe with this tried-and-tested dough. 

It turned out that the dough recipe was accompanied by suggestions for fillings, including marzipan; this inevitably gave rise to mission creep and the grandiose notion of making one set of cinnamon whirls and one set of marzipan. The result, if less than professional in appearance, was wholly acceptable as far as taste was concerned. 

Note 1: it is best to make the cinnamon and / or marzipan filling before the dough, so it is ready to be used once the dough has been kneaded. 

Note 2: If you only want to make one set of buns, halve the quantities for the dough. 

CINNAMON FILLING 
Ingredients 
75g butter, softened 
50g dark brown sugar 
2 tsp cinnamon 
pinch salt 

Method 
Beat ingredients together until soft and easily spreadable

MARZIPAN
Ingredients
3oz ground almonds*
3oz caster sugar*
2oz icing sugar*
almond essence
1 egg
* As usual, the mammal decreased the sweetness slightly, using 4oz ground almonds and a total of 4oz of the sugars.

Method
Place ground almonds, caster and icing sugar, almond essence, and egg in a bowl and beat with wooden spoon.

ENRICHED BREAD DOUGH
Ingredients
1.5lb flour
1 tsp salt [actually used a heaped half tsp]
3oz butter (chilled)
2oz caster sugar
1 sachet quick (instant) yeast
8fl oz hand-hot milk
3 eggs, beaten

Method
Mix flour and salt together. Rub in butter, add sugar. Stir in yeast.

Gradually add milk.

Add eggs and mix to a soft dough. Turn onto a lightly floured board and knead until smooth.
[Note: this might be easier said than done – the dough is very soft indeed, so soft that the mammal chickened out of going straight to the kneading and first mixed it vigorously with a wooden spoon in the bowl until it had reached a manageable state of elasticity. Probably real bakers will faint on reading this.]

When the dough is kneaded, divide into two equal pieces if you have halved the quantities. 

Roll the first (or only) piece out on a lightly floured board until it is about 14 by 8 inches (you can vary this a little depending on the size and shape of the rolls you want). Gently spread on the filling with a knife, leaving a margin of about half an inch on the long sides. 

Roll up along the long edges, like a Swiss roll. Then cut into equal slices (8 gives fairly hefty buns, 10 or 12 for smaller ones) and set the pieces out on a greased and lightly floured baking sheet / tray on their sides, i.e. with the filling visible.

Repeat with second dough and filling if required.

Cover buns with lightly oiled clingfilm and leave in a warm part of the room to prove for an hour or until sufficiently risen (they won't double in size because of the filling, but they should be noticeably bigger). Brush lightly with egg before baking if you like.

Heat oven to 200°C / 400°F / Gas mark 6 and, when it has warmed sufficiently, bake the buns in the centre of the oven for 20 minutes (check after 15m if your oven is on the hot side).

Remove from oven and cool on a wire tray. 

If you want to try the dough as per the Guardian recipe, you can find it here: 
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/may/22/how-to-bake-perfect-cinnamon-buns (the article also discusses various opinions and alternative recipes for making the best cinnamon buns).

The source of the dough recipe given above is lost in the mists of time and transmission, so apologies for failing to credit it.

Gevulde speculaas (Speculaas with rich almond stuffing)

A seasonal recipe, this, and typically Dutch. You can either go the whole hog and make the marzipan-filled version, or just make the speculaas dough to make rich, spicy biscuits.
"Speculaas or speculoos is one of the Dutch culinary specialties. It is a spiced biscuit, made with wooden forms or moulds. They are typically winterfood, and especially associated with the feast of 'Sint Nicolaas' or Saint Nicholas, the original Santa Claus. This feast is celebrated on 5 or 6 December. Speculaas is very old, the spices used date from medieval times."
The recipe comes from the Coquinaria website, which gives some background information as well and from which the above information was extracted.

Note: This is a cake / biscuit recipe, but it also works very well if you serve it hot with ice cream as a dessert. It makes a fair amount, so plenty to allow the best of both worlds!

Ingredients for speculaas dough
500 gram (4 1/4 cups) simple white flour
250 gram (1 cup) cold butter
250 gram (1 1/4 cup) sugar
2 eggs, stirred
1/2 decilitre (1/4 cup) cream
salt to taste (don't forget this, and be liberal, otherwise your speculaas will taste bland)
50 to 60 gram (1/4 cup) spices for speculaas*
grated skin of 2 untreated lemons
200 gram (2 cups) flaked almonds, broken in to little pieces (optional)
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
*This is a standard mix readily available in the Netherlands, but the website gives instructions for mixing it from scratch using powdered cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, white pepper, ginger and cardamom.

Ingredients for almond paste** [you can use ready-made marzipan if you want]
Ground almonds
Caster sugar
Icing sugar
Eggs
Almond essence
Vanilla essence
**Use a standard recipe for almond paste / marzipan; depending on how deep a filling you want, use somewhere between 300g and 500g of ground almonds and proportion the other ingredients accordingly. 

Method
Go to the Coquinaria website at
http://www.coquinaria.nl/english/recipes/speculaas.htm

Easter egg cupcakes

SM 2002-03 p.55 [01.061.02]
Makes 12
Chocolate: bar, 12 sugar-coated chocolate eggs
Almond: ground
Cheese: cream cheese

Frangipane and apple tart

SM 2002-03 p.61 [01.058.04]
Serves 8
Almonds: ground.

Chicken Pasanda

02.022.01

This recipe comes from David Smith's website, The Curry House, which is dedicated to providing cook-at-home versions of the staples served up by Indian restaurants and takeaways.

The idea is to match the taste as closely as possible—as anyone knows who has cooked food from recipes genuinely native to the Indian subcontinent, it does not greatly resemble the forms that have evolved in curry houses. For those evenings where you want the taste of a takeaway without surrendering control over the nutritional / ethical quality of your ingredients and processes, this website is a gem.

The printout of the chicken pasanda recipe has been sitting quietly in the Inner Mammal's recipe folder for years; last night, we finally got around to making it, and lovely it was too.

Makes 2 portions

Preparation / Cooking time: about 1h 30m all told

Ingredients
3 tablespoons vegetable oil or ghee (clarified butter)
1 small onion - finely chopped
1.5 inch piece cassia bark (or cinnamon)
2 green cardamon pods
1 inch piece fresh ginger - very finely chopped
2 cloves garlic - very finely chopped
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon ground coriander seed
half teaspoon good chilli powder
5 tablespoons Greek-style full cream yoghurt (3/4 of a 150 gm tub)
1 teaspoon (or a little more) concentrated tomato purée 
salt to taste
2 chicken breasts, skinned and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 tablespoons flaked almonds prepared as in Method
chopped fresh coriander leaf (cilantro) to garnish

As usual when using other people's freely available recipes, the Mammal directs you to the source to see what you have to do with all these ingredients.

There is a later version of this recipe, but it is available only on subscription (at the modest price of £7.75) to The Curry House Cookery Book, an e-book containing many recipes and useful information about ingredients and cooking methods.

Tiny Florentines

SM 2002-11 pp.98–99 [01.048.02]
Makes about 20
Dried fruits = mixed peel, glace cherries, and sultanas or crystallized fruits.

Warm chocolate Mascarpone cheesecake

SM 2002-11 p.98 [01.048.01]
Serves 8

Almond and chocolate chip cake

SM 2003-02 p.71 [01.045.02]
Makes 10 slices

Sweet apricot and almond pudding

SM 2002-10 p.85 [01.010.01]
Serves 6
Apricots: tinned; almonds: flaked.

Lemon almond biscuits

SM 2002-05 p.55 [01.038.04]
Makes about 36 (18 filled)