Honey and peanut butter cereal bars

This is based on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's honey and peanut butter cereal bars, the recipe of which seems to have disappeared from Channel 4's site. Anyway, I've been trying to fine tune it to reduce the sugar content, and it's still a bit of a work in progress...

This makes about 8-12 bars.

60g unsalted butter
40g soft brown sugar
30g chunky peanut butter
20g honey
100g porridge
75 g dried fruit
60g mixed seeds and nuts (almonds or pecans?)
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 160C and grease approximately a 20"x10" tray. Melt the butter, sugar, peanut butter and honey in a pan. Once it's all melted stir in the oats, dried fruit, seeds, nuts and cinnamon. Pour this mixture into the greased tin and bake for around 30 min at 160C. Remove from the oven and leave to cool. Turn out from the tin and cut into squares.

Amaretti biscuits

Partly from Antonio Carluccio's A-Z of Italian Food and partly from other sources this recipe makes the soft-centered kind of almond Amaretti biscuits.

Makes 20-30

220g ground almonds
110g caster sugar
2 egg whites
Rind of 1/4 lemon
15ml Amaretto liqueur

Lightly beat the egg whites and carefully fold the sugar into them, then add the ground almonds, Amaretto and lemon rind (less if you want) and fold them in. Antonio says you should pipe the mixture onto a buttered baking tray, I just use a couple of teaspoons to make small mounds. Sprinkle them with some demerara sugar and place in a preheated oven at 190C and bake until just brown - about 15-20 minutes. Maybe for Christmas?

Chocolate brownies

This one's from the Guardian...

Jane Asher's American brownies

Makes 10

200ml vegetable oil
150g golden granulated sugar
100g dark brown soft sugar
2 tsps vanilla extract
3 medium eggs
60g cocoa powder
100g self-raising flour
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp sodium bicarbonate
100g chopped hazelnuts or walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180C (165C fan-assisted) 350F, gas mark 4. Prepare a 20 x 25 cm (or 23 cm square) baking tin. Put all the ingredients into a large mixing bowl and beat well together. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 25-30 minutes, depending on how chewy you like your brownies. Let the brownies cool in the tin, then turn out and decorate.

For my latest batch I replaced some of the hazelnuts with chopped up good-quality dark chocolate and some raisins.

Friands

From "Simple Food" by Jill Dupeix

Makes 10

180g butter (preferably unsalted)
200g icing sugar
60g plain flour, sifted
120g ground almonds
5 large free-range egg whites
1 tsp grated lemon or orange rind
icing sugar for dusting

"The friand is a truly awsome small, moist, dense, rich, almondy cake. It's very, very French and very, very chic."

"Heat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Melt the butter and allow to cool, then use 1 tbsp to coat 10 muffin tin moulds."

"Sift the icing sugar and flour into a bowl, and mix in the ground almonds. Lightly beat the egg whites with a fork, then fold them into the dry ingredients. Add the cooled, melted butter and lemon rind, and mix well."

"Three-quarters fill each mould with the mixture and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 10 minutes. Turn the tray around, and bake for another 5 to 10 minutes, until the tops are golden and spring back to the touch."

"Leave in the tins for 5 minutes, then gently unmould onto a wire tray and leave to cool. Dust the friands with icing sugar to serve, or store them in an airtight container for up to 3 days."


My notes:

Egg whites - Having made custard with egg yolks, or anything else, this is a great recipe to use up egg whites, as are macaroons.

Cooking times - I seem to need 10 minutes, turn around and another 10 minutes. My oven is not particularly good.

Size - You can make smaller ones in fairy cake cases or use a muffin tin for larger ones.

This gets a review from A of 9.5 out of 10 - "they would have got 10 if they were bigger".