I promised you my winning ‘coffee and….’ recipe last week and so here it is. The challenge was designed by Union Roasted for our day out to their roastery to get us thinking about what would pair best with coffee. In doing so thus encouraging us to think about not just what we’re used to accompanying our favourite beverage, but to dig a little deeper and taste characteristics and flavour nuances that could be extricated by a clever pairing, or at least that’s how I went about my entry.

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My initial thoughts were to bring along some single origin chocolate as, more often than not, this is my own preferred coffee partner. A Madagascan chocolate with it’s fruity red berry notes complementing and enhancing a coffee from Costa Rica, with it’s similar flavours. Or perhaps something really mellow, smooth, rich and….well, chocolatey like Akesson’s Fazenda Monte Alegre from Brazil, so that the sometimes bold flavours of each aren’t struggling against each other too much. You could of course, go right to the other end of the scale with something that really packs a punch like Duffy’s Academy of Chocolate award winning Honduras Indio Rojos, with it’s seriously rich flavours of currents, orange zest and even a touch of coffee. But then it all started to get a bit serious on Twitter with competitors talking about baking up a storm, and my own suppressed competitive streak came to the fore; it might be nice to enter a competition, but it’s even nicer to win….oh dear.

I decided on my soft biscotti or cantuccini recipe mainly because they’re all flavours I particularly like, they also seemed in keeping with, if not the weather a the moment, then at least what we’d normally expect from Autumn. I was also inspired by the recent Coffee Saturday Biscotti Bake-off orgnised by Daniel Young that I didn’t get the chance to enter. I think the biscuits would happily pair well with most coffees, but there’s quite a few ingredients there so I wouldn’t suggest anything too delicate, maybe a nice mild, smooth and sweet Ethiopian Yirgacheffe as was suggested by Jeremy and Steven on the day.

Ginger, Hazelnut, Fig and Chocolate Spelt Biscotti:

• 200g wholegrain spelt flour
• 30g softened butter
• 1 egg beaten
• 125g light muscovado sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 100g blanched hazelnuts roghly halfed
• 50g good dark chocolate
• 50g dried figs
• 2 pieces stem ginger chopped with a glug of the syrup
• half a teaspoon cinnamon
• pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Line a large baking tray with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar, add the egg, then sift in the flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in all your other ingredients and tip out on to a flour dusted work surface.

Work the dough into a long sausage shape almost the length of the tray and flatten slightly so the width is more than the height. Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes until it’s golden but still quite soft. While still hot quickly slice into the dough at an angle in about 2 cm spaces then go back and cut all the way through; as the dough cools this gets harder to do so work quite quickly.

Gently lay the slices back on the baking tray and return to the oven for around 5-10 minutes to toast them, they should be darker around the edges but still a little soft in the centre.

Serve with the coffee of your choice. Don’t forget you can get a 10% discount on any of Union’s coffees online if you use the checkout code ‘FAERIE10′ www.unionroasted.com

The post Coffee and Ginger, Hazelnut, Fig and Chocolate Spelt Cantuccini first appeared on The Faerietale Foodie.

This year, post fig excitement, I’ve mainly been inspired by the combination of greengages and cobnuts, both insistently and persistently catching my eye at the little grocery store by Herne Hill station. When ripe, it seems almost a crime to do anything more with them than to serve together simply with a dollop of Greek yoghurt. The humble greengage almost glows with an internal iridescence that’s more ethereally beautiful than any stained glass window; subtle shades of peachy yellow through bright to dusky, blueish green. Cobnuts are cousins of the hazelnut and akin in flavour but taste fresher and brighter when they’re new, as they are in the shops right now.

It wasn’t a mistake to serve them grilled on toast with a little Comte as a post dinner savoury. Or with a chunk of Comte and a glass of light Jura red. That may just happen again since I brought over 1.5 kilos of the cheese back with me from Jura….(more on that trip when I have a little more time and on harvest too)

This week I decided to try something a touch more elaborate, spurred on by a craving for cake, my current flavour obsessions leading the way. I based this on a plum and hazelnut recipe on the Daily Mail website, not my usual source of anything, but the ratios seemed ok and fruit/nuts interchangeable, I added a smidge of stem ginger for some warming spice that’s not immediately apparent but builds gently on the finish.

Greengage, Cobnut and Stem Ginger Cake – Makes 10 large wedges

• 200g butter at room temperature, cut into pieces
• 200g golden caster sugar
• 4 large eggs beaten
• 120g self raising flour
• 80g wholemeal spelt flour
• salt
• 200g cobnuts – roasted and blitzed in a food processor – retain a handful of whole for the top
• stem ginger chopped finely plus syrup
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 punnets greengages
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line a 25cm ish spring form cake tin with baking paper.

Roughly stone and chop the greengages from one of the punnets (250g)

Add the caster sugar and butter to a large bowl and cream together until smooth. Gradually add in the eggs, beating to combine after each addition. Fold in the flours, baking powder and a pinch of salt and finally stir in the chopped greengages, cobnuts and stem ginger (I used just 3 pieces plus a drizzle of the syrup but add more or less to taste), reserving a couple of tablespoons of ground cobnuts for topping.

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Pour batter into the cake tin. Stone and halve greengages from the 2nd punnet and lay on the cake surface, cut side down. Mix reserved ground cobnuts with the demerara sugar and sprinkle over the top then finish by scattering over the remaining whole cobnuts.

Bake in the centre of the oven for around 40-45 or until the surface is crisp and golden and an inserted knife comes out clean.

I served simply with a big dollop of natural Greek Yoghurt

The post Greengage, Cobnut and Stem Ginger Cake first appeared on The Faerietale Foodie.