Katie Stewart's apricot teabread

I was particularly sad to hear of the death of cookery writer Katie Stewart the other day as her books were a bible as I was learning to cook. (No, please don't work out how old that makes me.) Other people on Twitter clearly felt that way too so we had a bit of a Katie Stewart love-in last weekend when we all cooked a favourite recipe.

Mine was a teabread, the sort of cake that's gone out of fashion but which was both delicious and economical because you could slice it so thinly. It's also incredibly easy to make - a bit like a boiled fruit cake.

At the time I used to follow recipes religiously, terrified that even the slightest deviation would result in disaster but emboldened by having written a few cookery books of my own I realise they're only a guideline. Revisiting the recipe I cut down the sugar and ground cloves and would certainly use mixed spice instead of the three different ground spices Katie recommends if I didn't already have them in my storecupboard.

The central ingredient, apricots, has also changed in that unsulphured apricots are much more widely available than when the recipe was written and also tend to be sold in a ready-to-eat version. That admittedly makes the teabread less colourful but improves the flavour. (They were also a £1 a pack cheaper in my local health food shop.) You do however need slightly less liquid than the original because you don't need to rehydrate the apricots - I've made that adjustment in my version below.

Makes 1 large loaf

225g dried apricots, preferably unsulphured
200-250ml water depending whether your apricots are read- to-eat or not (less if they are)
150g caster sugar (unrefined caster sugar for preference)
75g butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
225g (8oz) plain flour
1 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 level tsp salt
1/2 level tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 level tsp ground cloves and a pinch of nutmeg or 1 tsp mixed spice

You will also need a lightly oiled 9 x 5 x 3 inch (2lb) non-stick loaf tin. If you haven't a non-stick tin, line it with baking paper

Snip the apricots in small pieces (easiest with kitchen scissors) and place in a large saucepan. Add the water, sugar and butter and place over a low heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar then bring up to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Draw the pan off the heat and allow to cool until the hand can be comfortably held against the side of the pan. Beat in the egg.

In the meantime preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4. Sift the flour with the bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon, ground cloves and nutmeg (or mixed spice). Tip the sifted flour mixture into the apricots and beat thoroughly.

Transfer the mixture into the loaf tin and spread evenly. Place in the centre of the oven and bake for an hour until well risen and firm. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes then tip out of the tin and cool on a wire rack. Serve sliced with butter or on its own. It also freezes well.

The recipe came from a rather charming collection called Katie Stewart Cooks which accompanied an ITV series and cost all of 40p. You might also enjoy her The Times Cookery Book and the more recent Katie Stewart's Good Food.

Aggie's Granny’s scones

It's taken me a couple of days to get the recipe I promised you from Aggie MacKenzie's new book. I went for these scones because they look so delicious and involve so few ingredients. I suspect there's more to them than meets the eye - they look so fabulously light but have a go. This is what Aggie says about them:

"These are legendary. My mother’s mother made them almost daily (bread was a once-a-week delivery in the remote north-west of Scotland) and they were eaten with crowdie, which is a cream cheese that’s sharp and dense. My mother does these too, and they are the talk of the area. And of course it’s the recipe I always use. A few ingredients to get together, sure, but my goodness the results are unbeatable."

Prep: 15 minutes
Cook: around 10 minutes
Makes 16 scones

40g/1½oz/3 tbsp butter
1 level tbsp golden (light corn) syrup
1 medium egg
300ml/10fl oz/1¼ cups buttermilk 
(if you can get it) or milk
450g/1lb/3¼ cups plain (all-purpose) flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 heaped tsp cream of tartar
1 heaped tsp salt

Preheat the oven to the hottest setting (Have checked this with Aggie who says 240°C/Gas 9) 
and place a large baking sheet inside. Melt the butter and syrup together in 
a pan. Mix the egg and buttermilk together. Put the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add both the wet mixtures to the dry 
ingredients and stir with a large metal spoon. (If you use milk instead of 
buttermilk, the mix might seem too wet 
but fear not.)

Have lots of flour on your work surface 
and empty the mix on to it. Sprinkle on a good layer of flour. Gently roll out into a rough circle about 2cm/¾in thick. Cut up into 16 pieces; some will be square, some will be corners, but they’ll all taste 
gorgeous.

Arrange on the hot baking sheet (no need 
to grease), spaced 
a little apart. Put in the oven for about 
7-8 minutes until nicely golden. Cool on 
a wire rack.

From Aggie's Family Cookbook, published by Pavilion Books, price £20.

Is it worth baking your own cakes?

I baked a really brilliant cake last weekend. No credit to me - I'm not a great baker - but the recipe came from my friend and erstwhile commissioning editor Sarah Randell, who is.

Sarah has been brought up in the Delia school of patient and exhaustive recipe testing - she used to work on Delia's books, hence the unusual credit on the front of her own new book Weekend Baking. (Delia almost never gives endorsements for cookery books.) She's now the Food Director of Sainsbury's magazine (which is where I worked for her) and tweets as @sarahbonviveur for those of you who are on Twitter.

The cake's particularly delicious taste owes a great deal to the amount of dried fruit in it and the agave nectar, a natural fructose sweetener. It's an ingredient you might well not have at home which got me thinking about the cost of baking.

No doubt about it, it costs more to bake your own cakes than buy them ready made, particularly fruit cakes. They obviously taste much, much better, make the kitchen smell great, give you a glow of satisfaction and probably feed more people than a shop-bought cake - but those people will probably eat far more than they would of a shop-bought cake as well.

I know baking is more about love than economics but what is the frugal cook to do? Adapt the recipe to use ingredients you already have for a start. Sarah already suggests a range of different nuts so you could use what you have, toasting them first if they've been hanging around the cupboards for a while. I didn't have prunes so I used apricots and figs instead which was lovely. And I didn't give the cake its final crust of crushed sugar lumps but used the demerara sugar I had instead.

The other strategy is to find another way to use the ingredients you have had to buy, such as the agave nectar. The most obvious being to make another cake and as we're not mad about conventional Christmas cake I plan to make this again instead. (Sarah suggests that if you want to make the cake more celebratory you can brush warm, smooth apricot jam over it and decorate it with small dried apricots and pecan halves.) And there are shedloads of suggestions if you Google 'agave nectar recipes'.

There's also the question of tins. I didn't have the 18 cm square tin that Sarah recommended so used a round 21cm tin instead. It made the cake slightly shallower than it should have been but it was fine. If you're an infrequent or inexperienced baker it's easy to fall into the trap of feeling you have to buy a new tin every time you make a cake. There's a useful chart on how to adjust the size you use here. (I should ideally have used a 20cm round tin)

Anyway, try it - for Christmas or not - it's a really great recipe.

Sarah's Simple Fruit Cake
Serves 12

100 g ready-to-eat dried apricots or figs
125 g stoned, soft Agen prunes
125 g shelled pecan nuts, almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts, or a mixture
150 g butter, softened
125 g light brown soft sugar
175 g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
150 g sultanas
juice and zest of 1 orange
juice and zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
2 tablespoons agave nectar (or runny honey)
2 pure cane rough-cut sugar cubes, roughly crushed

an 18-cm square tin, 7 cm deep, lined with baking parchment and buttered

Preheat the oven to 150˚C (300˚F) Gas 2.

Using scissors, snip the dried apricots and the prunes into small pieces. Roughly chop the nuts.

Put the butter and sugar in an electric mixer (or use a large mixing bowl and an electric whisk) and beat until combined and fluffy.

Sift the flour and cinnamon into another bowl.

Add the flour mixture and beaten eggs alternately to the butter and sugar, whisking on a low setting all the time.

Using a large metal or wooden spoon, stir in the chopped fruit and nuts, the sultanas, orange and lemon juices and zests and the agave nectar. Mix well.

Tip the mixture into the prepared tin and spread it evenly with a spatula.

Sprinkle the crushed sugar over the cake, then bake in the preheated oven for 1 1/4 hours. Leave to cool in the tin.

Recipe taken from Weekend Baking by Sarah Randell, published by Ryland Peters &Small £16.99.

Do you regard the cost of home baking as an issue? If so how do you keep down the cost? Do you ever feel it's simpler/easier to buy a ready-made cake or does the pleasure of baking your own generally outweigh that?

Chocolate cappucino cake

The food news story of the past few days is that we're all getting back into baking. I'm not sure that isn't one of those slightly whimsical ideas the media gets into its collective head (I can't smell any baking smells wafting from our neighbouring flats) but it's a nice, comforting thought anyway.

I must confess I'm not an avid baker - which is just as well otherwise I'd be the size of a house - but I did come up with a really great recipe for The Frugal Cook which I adapted from a splendid book called Best Kept Secrets of the WI: Cakes and Biscuits. It's not terribly thrifty (or healthy, let’s face it) but even frugal cooks deserve a treat. And it does involve economies. Leftover coffee. Cocoa instead of chocolate (for the cake at least) and buttermilk spread instead of butter. If you're planning to join the ranks of the New Bakers, give it a go.

Makes 12-16 squares or bars (so a good weekend bake for a crowd)
1 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp hot strong black coffee
200g unrefined caster sugar
225g hard buttermilk spread (e.g. Willow) at room temperature
4 medium eggs at room temperature
225g self-raising flour sifted with 1 tsp baking powder
For the icing
90g milk chocolate (Belgian rather than Cadbury's - see tip below)
40g butter or buttermilk spread
2 tbsp strong black coffee or milk
125g icing sugar

You’ll also need a medium-sized shallow rectangular cake tin about 18 x 32 cm lined with baking parchment (if it's not non-stick)

Turn the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4. Sift the cocoa into a large bowl, pour over the hot coffee and stir. Add the caster sugar, stir then tip in the spread, eggs and half the self-raising flour and beat thoroughly together with a wooden spoon or an electric hand whisk. Fold in the remaining flour. Spoon the mixture into the tin and level the surface. Bake for about 35-40 minutes until well risen and firm to the touch. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes then carefully tip out on a wire rack to cool. To make the icing break up the chocolate and put it in a basin with the butter and coffee or milk. Place the bowl over a pan of hot water, taking care that it doesn’t touch. Once the ingredients have melted remove from the heat and beat in the sifted icing sugar. Return the cooled cake to the tin, spread the icing evenly over the surface and leave to set for a couple of hours. Cut the cake into 12-16 squares or bars - or smaller pieces if you prefer.

A thrifty tip: Buy your milk chocolate in the bakery section rather than from the confectionery shelves. It tends to be cheaper

The return of marge?

Next week A level results are announced so I've been frantically busy with my new Beyond Baked Beans student cooking page on Facebook (note the subtle plug ;-)

The great thing about it is that students can upload recipes and videos direct and we've already got some great ones on the page.

One which has caught my eye is a video of a 'Really Moist Chocolate Cake' which was submitted by 15 year old Rebecca Carey who recently won the Guild of Food Writers young cookery writers competition 'Write It'.

What's interesting about the cake is that it contains a good dollop of yoghurt (hence the moistness) and soft tub margarine.

Now that's a blast from the past!

When I first started to bake, recipes always suggested using soft tub marge because it was so easy to cream. In fact you could put all the ingredients together in a bowl and simply beat them by hand (or, rather with a wooden spoon . . .)

It's also a great deal cheaper than using butter. I checked out my local Sainsbury's yesterday and found that Stork was selling at 69p for 500g, far cheaper than spreadable butter or indeed many of the new butter-imitating spreads.

You wouldn't want to use it for spreading on bread but there are plenty of alternatives. You can buy a tub of Sainsbury's Buttersoft Slightly Salted for £1.70 for 500g which is cheaper than any of the spreadable butters.

The cheapest block butter in Sainsbury's was 85p for 250g. I'd still use that for cooking but I think if I had a family to feed and was trying to cut my food budget I'd definitely be working my way round the spreads to find one I liked.

What do you use for eating or cooking? Would you, do you use marge or one of the oil-based spreads? And what do you use for baking?