Homemade Chai in a Bottle

Makes approx. 1.5 litres chai concentrate

Ingredients
10 tea bags
2 cinnamon sticks
80g light brown sugar
3-inch piece of root ginger, grated
10 whole cloves
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
2 whole star anise
1 tsp fennel seeds
½ teaspoon of whole black peppercorns
peel of one orange (I peeled it like an apple, so the large strips won’t fit through the sieve at the end)
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

Method

Add all ingredients except the teabags and vanilla extract to a large saucepan along with a litre of water and bring to the boil. Boil around 800ml water in a kettle and add to the teabags. Leave to soak for a few minutes and squeeze. Add the tea to the pan. Simmer for 20-30 minutes before straining to remove the bits. Add the vanilla extract and decant into bottles whilst still warm. Seal the bottles and allow to cool.

Store in the fridge once cool. I would guess (though this hasn’t been tested) it would keep for 2-4 weeks unopened and 2 weeks once opened. When required, pour out around 2cm of syrup (more or less depending on taste) into a cup before topping up with hot milk or boiling water.

Makes a great Christmas gift all dressed up with ribbons, tags and a cinnamon stick and would also be nice as a flavouring in cakes and traybakes.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes

There’s something really nice about how peanut butter cupcakes sounds as it rolls off the tongue. I think it might be the combination of Nuh-Buh-Cuh, if you get what I mean? No…well, I don’t blame you.

I made these a while ago and unfortunately, as tends to happen, life got in the way of me uploading the recipe. They were for my housemate’s birthday and I had to make them, wash up and tidy away in under an hour to keep them a surprise! I ended up icing them in my bedroom just in case she came into the kitchen…

They are relatively “mild” on the peanut butter front. Or at least I think so. Feel free to use substitute more of the butter for peanut butter. God knows I would, but not everyone likes peanut butter as much as I do…

Makes approx 12-14

Ingredients

75g butter
110g peanut butter
200g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
260g plain flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
180ml milk

Icing

75g butter
165g icing sugar
3 tsp water
1 tsp cinnamon

Method

Preheat the oven to 180^oC/350^oF/gas mark 4 and line a muffin tray with muffin cases.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, peanut butter and brown sugar. It helps if your butter is soft to begin with, so either take it out the fridge and stick it in your warming oven for a few minutes. Careful not to let it melt though. Once “fluffy and light” or once your arms get too achey to cream anymore, beat in the egg and vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, sieve together the flour, salt, baking powder, bicarb and spices. Add about a quarter to the butter/sugar/egg mix, stir in, add a quarter of the milk, stir in and then repeat until you have no flour or milk left. Fill the cupcake cases ¾ full and stick in the oven for approximately 20 minutes.

While they’re baking, cream all the icing ingredients together in a bowl. Again, soft butter helps here (though I wouldn’t put it in the oven this time). Try not to “over” cream it as it will start to separate, for reasons unbeknownst to me!

Check the cakes in the usual manner by inserting a knife or skewer into the middle of one of the cakes to see if it comes out clean – if not put back in for a couple of minutes and check again/repeat until done.

Leave to cool before icing, otherwise the butter will melt and you’ll have some fairly disgusting looking cupcakes. I topped mine with a dollop of peanut butter and various nuts to make them as birthday-tastic as I could.

Rhubarb & Ginger Jam

When in Bristol for the Jubilee weekend we had afternoon tea at a wonderful little café. It consisted of savoury and sweet scones, with chutney and jam respectively. They were so bloody scrumptious we thought we’d attempt to replicate them. Here is the recipe for our sweet jam. The corresponding sweet scone recipe is here, the savoury scone here and the chutney here. Magic.

Ingredients

1kg  rhubarb
400g jam sugar (or caster sugar and 8g pectin)
30g stem ginger
6cm piece of root ginger
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Wash and chop the rhubarb into 1cm slices. Chop the stem ginger and  grate the root ginger. Add to a large pan with the sugar and other ingredients. Bring to the boil over a medium heat. Note, you do not need to add any liquid to this as the rhubarb will smush down. Simmer on a low heat for around an hour, but use your common sense; the sauce should be thick and slightly sticky. Quite like jam. In fact, very like jam. Try cooling a small amount on cold plate to see if it is ready. It will thicken on cooling, so  bear this in mind.

Pour into a sterilised jar and leave to cool. Keep in the fridge. At a guess, it would be best eaten within 8 weeks. But we will not be liable for any stomach bugs incurred if eaten before or after this length of time. It was chosen somewhat arbitrarily. Who knows, it might be 16 or it might be 4, ours probably won’t last that long anyway…!

*Tip Alert*

Sterilising jars

There are a few ways of doing this, but we find the easiest is to wash them by hand in hot soapy water. Dry them in the oven on a very low setting (around 70°) for around ten minutes. Put the jam into the jars whilst both are still hot. Remember that if you cool glass jars very quickly (put them in cold water whilst still hot) they will probably crack, so don’t do that.

J&W