Brighten up Fairtrade Fortnight with some cooking and baking!
Make all your favourite recipes for chocolate cakes, coffee cakes - all your favourite treats – using fair trade ingredients and with a fair trade cup of tea or coffee of course!
Do look for the ‘Fairtrade’ logo or buy from another trusted source when you are choosing your ingredients!
These are some of our favourite recipes:
Sara’s family recipe for flapjack
100g/4oz margarine/butter/ ‘Vitalite’ (DF)
100g/4oz ‘Fairtrade’ light soft brown sugar
75g/3 generous tablespoons syrup
225g/8oz GF oats
Put the margarine, sugar and syrup into a saucepan. Stir over a low heat until melted. Add the oats and other ‘extras’ and mix well.
Place into a lined 9”x11” or 7”x7” (makes 8 deeper slices) shallow tin.
Bake in the centre of a moderate oven for about 20- 25 minutes until golden brown. Cool slightly and then mark into squares or bars.
Allow it to get cold before removing from the tin.
Add in’s………….
Chopped dried apricots, dates, raisins, pecan nuts, sunflower seeds, linseed seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds; anything you like!
Marion’s favourite chocolate brownies
Ingredients
300g FairTrade Dark Chocolate, chopped into small pieces
250g Unsalted Butter, chopped into small pieces
4 Free Range Eggs
150g FairTrade Caster Sugar
150g FairTrade Dark Brown Soft Sugar
80g FairTrade Cocoa
65g Plain Flour
(1/4tsp Xantham Gum if using Gluten Free Plain Flour)
2 Balls Stem Ginger, finely chopped
1tbsp Stem Ginger Syrup
Icing Sugar for decorating
Icing Sugar for decorating
Method
STEP 1 Preheat your oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4 and grease and line a tin approx 20x30cm.
STEP 2 In a large heavy based saucepan, over a low heat, melt 200g dark chocolate and all of the butter. Stir frequently to ensure its not burning. When its all melted set aside.
STEP 3 In a separate bowl whisk together your eggs and sugar and then pour into your chocolate mixture and stir to combine.
STEP 4 Sieve your dry ingredients into the chocolate mixture and stir together well. Add your remaining 100g chocolate, the finely chopped stem ginger and ginger syrup and mix to combine.
STEP 5 Pour your mixture into the prepared tin and make sure its evenly spread. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until it has started to crackle on top and is slightly firm on top.
STEP 6 Once the brownie has cooled, cut into 24 pieces and dust with icing sugar. It tastes amazing with creme fraiche, ice cream, cream or by itself!
Or, for a complete change, check out this recipe supplied by Grant Wilson of Grow Cook Learn. It brings together fairly traded walnuts with a great local ingredient and he tells us this is a great favourite in their cafe
Wild Garlic Pesto
Wild garlic grows abundantly in woodlands and the leaves can be picked during April and early May to make this delicious, healthy pesto. It can be used as a pasta sauce, added to mayonnaise to make a dip or used to flavour chicken or fish.
Ingredients (To make enough for two people)
100g wild garlic leaves
50g shallots
50g walnuts
200ml virgin rapeseed oil
50g parmesan cheese
A good pinch of salt
Method
Thoroughly wash and dry your wild garlic leaves
Peel and roughly chop the shallots
Grate the parmesan cheese
Add all the ingredients to a food processer and blitz until
smooth
If not eating straight away, transfer to a sterile jar and the
sauce will keep for three months