Old faithfuls

I love trying new recipes, and I also love making old familiar recipes over and over again.  But something I've been very bad at trying is new versions of old favourite dishes.  It seems all wrong to go gallivanting around with new ideas when you've already got a recipe that is well loved, well tested and that you know by heart.

And yet...whisper it...maybe there could be something even better than that old faithful recipe you've been making forever.

So over the past month I have been RADICAL and DARING and tried out some new versions of old favourites.

I had an early success with flapjacks: out went the recipe my Mum gave me when I left home (sorry Ma!) and in came the Peyton & Byrne version.  The Peyton & Byrne recipe has dried fruit in it, and a high butter to syrup ratio, making them less good for your arteries, but kinder on your teeth.  O, who doesn't normally like flapjacks, loved these ones.

Then I decided to try a bigger challenge - meatloaf.  The recipe I've been baking since I was a teenager is one that a neighbour passed on to my Mum in the late 1970s.  My brother and I loved it as children, and my children now love it too.  It has hidden vegetables in it, succulent tender meat, and makes the whole house smell amazing while it bakes.  I felt very emotionally attached to my old recipe and thought that there was very little that could rival it.  But that recipe calls for both beef and pork, so when I only had beef but had already told my children and their friends that they were having meatloaf for tea, I had to look for another recipe.

I went for the one in the second Hairy Bikers Mum Knows Best book.  I didn't think anything was going to come up to the standard of my inherited recipe, but this new one was a revelation - quicker to make, much less fatty without the additional pork, and just as tasty.  The four children demolished the lot and asked for more.

And then I decided to mess around with that most sacred of old favourite recipes: fairy cakes.  I read somewhere a while back that if you swap half the quantity of flour for custard powder in your usual recipe then it makes for a more vanillary, creamy sponge  without altering the texture.  And today I tried it. 

I made autumn buns to use up the last of the unrefined icing sugar I bought in a fit of worthiness a couple of months ago.  Unrefined icing sugar is not a good idea.  It makes a murky, caramel-coloured icing that does not mix well with food colouring.  But the shade of icing is vaguely autumnal so I added some autumn sprinkles and rather liked the end result.

Autumn buns

And the addition of custard powder to the recipe was agreed by all to be A Very Good Thing.  The buns were light and full of flavour.  There aren't many of them left.

So what's next?  Is nothing sacred?  I still haven't found the nerve to mess around with my shortbread recipe, but perhaps I should.