If you (like me) panic bake in a global pandemic, you will have noticed that in ASDA and Waitrose alike, there are key baking ingredients missing. What are we to do? We must make SOMETHING! Here I present to you a selection of delish recipes that do not contain eggs, flour, raising agent or butter (I’ve even got a cookie recipe that contains none of these ingredients!) So throw away your preconceived notions of what you need to bake and load up your baskets on your next social distance shop.
Peanut Butter Cookies
So first up peanut butter cookies. Pretty great and you can adapt this recipe if you have any cocoa powder or melted spare choc (what a concept!) to make a choccie version. So you need 225g sugar, 225g peanut butter (smooth or crunchy and other nut butter would work perfectly too) and with one egg to bind it all together. Give it all a mix and form about 12-15 balls. Separate on the baking tray so they have space to spread a little and press down with a fork as easy decoration- if you fancy. Bake for 15-20 mins at 180ish, they come out pretty similar to Mary Berry’s fork biscuits and would be lovely dipped in choc or left how they are. I did thin choc versions and regular sized peanut ones to make some burger biscuits. Add some green buttercream, orange fondant and red and yellow icing to bring the burger to life.
(Chocolate) Biscuit Cake
Here is a recipe for cake, made from biscuits. Impossible you say? Well think again! Most of the ingredients for cake are also in biscuits. Try and pick up some chocolatey biscuits for more flavour in the cake. You need 350g of crushed biscuits (using a food processor is much easier but you can always use a rolling pin to smash them), 370ml milk (any kind but make sure it is warmed up as that helped bind the mixture better) and 2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder. Blitz the biscuits first, add the warm milk, baking powder and any extras (they’ll be fine without but you can add more choc, nutella, an essence of your choice like orange for more flavour if you fancy). Blend the ingredients together really well, you don’t want lumps if you can help it. Put it into a greased baking tray (makes 1 8 inch cake but will depend on the type of biscuits and amount of add ins). You could pop these into muffin cases if you didn’t have a cake tin too! Bake at 170ish for 15 mins (cooking time will vary depending on if you’re cooking in a tin or cases etc) and take it out once the cake tester or knife comes out clean. I added a choc buttercream and fondant pigs to decorate – yum!
Scones
Scones have got to be a favourite of any self respecting Brit and I have a recipe for sweet scones with 400g of self raising flour (you can use plain and add a couple of teaspoons of baking powder), 175ml of double cream and 175ml of lemonade. The lemonade needs to be fizzy and will act as your raising agent. Mix the ingredients together, until it forms a dough. Flour your work surface and roll out the dough to about a 2cm thickness. If you don’t have a rolling pin, use a floured wine bottle or tin, it will add to the rustic feel! If you don’t have cutters, use a glass, glass is better for cutting than a mug because it is thinner, you want it to cut the shapes rather than just pressing the dough. Bake for 12-15 mins at 180ish. You could use sparkling water and about 60g of sugar if you don’t have lemonade. If you fancy cheese scones instead, you can use sparkling water instead of lemonade (do not add sugar!), add a teaspoon of mustard and around 60g of strong shredded cheese. Baking is experimental and if they don’t come out perfectly don’t worry, they’ll still be eaten and taste delish. I added a bit of pesto and colouring to my version of cheese scones to make frog scones!
Please add your favourite lockdown recipes in the comments and send any pictures of your bakes (with recipes too if you can) into Vision’s Food and Drink instagram (@fooddrinkyork) for a chance to be featured in an article!
Keep safe and sane masterbakers!