let's ALL cook: quiche

The cooking challenge is off to a good start this year, with a record number of entries to our quiche cook-off. Thanks to the enthusiasm drummed-up in the Chrismas stollen challenge.

Here are the quiches:



Clockwise from top left: Derek's red pepper, leek & broccoli vegan quiche // Audrey's roasted tomato & parmesan quiche // My mum's cheddar, bacon, tomato & chive quiche // My roasted tomato, spinach & pine nut vegan quiche.

They all look pretty good - no baking disasters this time! It's impressive to have two vegan entries too - especially as quiche is so traditionally egg-based.

Derek made his filling using tofu and tahini, whereas I found a recipe which called for a filling mixture of soy cream, chickpea flour and ground cashews.

Here's the recipe I followed. I added basil and pine nuts to the ingredients too as they're my favourites.





The pastry was really easy to make, and simply substituted butter for olive spread to make it vegan. I decided to blind bake it first to make sure it was extra crispy and didn't go soggy once the filling was added.

The recipe actually made enough pastry and mixture to fill my quiche tin, with some left over for an extra mini quiche. Lucky us.






I was super pleased with how they both came out. The pastry was crisp, and the filling was firm. I really like the way the roasted tomatoes look too - it's quite a pretty quiche.

And luckily I made enough so that Ben and I could enjoy it cold for lunches throughout the week too.





The scores

Derek's was the first entry to come in. He had to self-judge his one, and he gave it a 7/10, docking himself points for adding too much filling (he said he was greedy).

I made mine next - it was a bit of a challenge as Ben normally doesn't like quiche that much due to the egg giving him tummy ache (hence the vegan approach). It paid off though as he said it was one of the best quiches he has ever had, and he didn't get a tummy ache either. He scored me 10/10 - success!

Audrey (Ben's mum) made hers next, and scored a very respectable 8/10 for her quiche. John (Ben's dad) later said that he would have given her an extra point if there had been bacon included too, which sounds very similar to my dad's approach to judging.

My mum made hers last, with my dad as the judge (luckily there was bacon!). He said he couldn't fault it and gave it full marks with 10/10. Well done mother!





This felt like quite a competitive one as there were so many of us taking part, so it's great that we all did so well.

I really enjoyed the quiche I made (especially when it was cold) and it was great for lunches at work, so I definitely think I'll make it again sometime soon. Good picnic food too!





Our next challenge is hot cross buns, and is scheduled to be completed by Easter.

I'm looking forward to this one as I love hot cross buns. Although at the moment I have no idea about how to do the cross. I'd better do some research...

let's cook: stollen

We decided to schedule in a festive cooking challenge this Christmas, partly because my mum was stalling with her sushi, and partly because it would be an opportunity for a side by side taste test as we would all be together in the same place.

The one shown on the left above was my stollen, and my mum's is on the right. My mum's definitely looks the most stollen-like.

The recipe I chose was this one, which was described as 'Nigel Slater's version of the perfect Christmas stollen'. I'm not sure where I went wrong, but I would say mine turned out far from perfect.

We hosted Christmas at our house this year, so Ben and I took to the kitchen on Christmas eve for a bit of a cooking session. A good day to bake a traditional German fruit bread too!





The ingredients list for the filling of Nigel Slater's stollen was definitely a winner: cardamoms, cherries, mixed peel, sultanas, ground cinnamon, flaked almonds and marzipan. It smelt delicious when it was all mixed together in a bowl.

Well, apart from the cardamoms, as I accidentally left them in the pestle and mortar and we only discovered them on boxing day - oops! I must have got distracted by the gravy/nut loaf/mushroom stuffing.

However, I think it was the construction where things started to go wrong for me. The filling was rolled up in the centre of the dough, rather than being mixed in, which meant it ended up as sort of filled tube of plain bread, rather than a lovely moist fruit loaf.






My mum seemed to get on better with her recipe. She followed a Delia Smith one she found in a newspaper (it might be this one). Hers had a long stick of marzipan running through the centre of the mixed-fruit dough, possibly more in line with the traditional Stollen.

It looks good!






So, to the judging...

We did the taste testing after a boxing day stroll and were lucky enough to have five judges presiding over this one. 

I think both of ours fell down for being a bit dense and not as moist as they should be. Although they were both a few days old when we did the testing - especially my mum's, who made hers a couple of days before Christmas.

I would be the first to admit mine wasn't a winning bake and was very pleased to receive a collective mark of 6/10 for my loaf. I think it might have been a bit generous actually.

My mum did much better and got a score of 8/10 for her stollen - success! It definitely did look the nicest.

For the next challenge, we've decided on making a quiche.

And we had a couple of new sign-ups to the challenge on boxing day so this one might be more of a group bake-off. Things are going to get competitive!