Home Our Ranges Meet the Grahams Kids Recipes Win Things Read & Watch Get In Touch Collect Golden Churns Christmas LOG IN or register to collect Golden Churns. Fair on the farm today 9°C Baking Q's? Just ask Sue! Our Foodie Friends Gold recipes Jean's recipes James Morton's Recipes Cooking videos Cooking with Dairy FAQs Kids' Recipes Your Recipes Submit a Recipe Win two places on a Nick Nairn Cook School class Click here to enter Great British Bake Off Star showcases Graham’s The Family Dairy We are delighted to partner with The Great British Bakeoff’s James Morton in helping Sunday Mail readers and keen home bakers to hone their cooking and baking skills. James will be writing a column for The Sunday Mail every week in association with Graham’s the Family Dairy. We'll also be publishing the recipes right here. Just the excuse you need to don your apron and get out all your Graham’s butter, milk and cream. James, who was a runner up on the hit BBC TV series, was the only Scottish contestant and became known for his quirky approach to baking. Originally hailing from Shetland, he became almost as well known for his jerseys as we are for our award-winning Jersey herd. Quick Proper Christmas Cake Recipe by: James Morton Last year at this same time, I wrote about a last-minute cake you could have instead of a proper Christmas cake. It was a carrot-cake like concoction, and was very nice. But it wasn’t a Christmas cake. This cake is a Christmas cake. And it will be just as good as any Christmas cake that’s been maturing for months and months and months. It will be just as good after a day, and better than most after a week. If you’ve not yet made a Christmas cake this year, you can’t use the excuse that you’ve not got enough time. The truth is that if you follow most recipes for this particular festive centrepiece, you’ll end up with something that is horribly dry. Thus, it needs those months of adding alcohol for the cake to be remotely edible by the time you hit the 25th. Yes, the dried fruit adds a lot of bulk and this cake will need a lot longer in the oven than your average Victoria Sponge. But even the famed Mary Berry recommends a ridiculous amount of baking time – over 4 hours, in her case. You’ll probably need less than half that. Oh no I didn’t. > Get the full recipe Mince pie crumbles Recipe by: James Morton It’s December. As I’m sure you know by now, that makes right now officially Christmas. Horrific isn’t it? Actually, no. Because Christmas is the mother of all excuses to glut out on a massive level. Start here. A close friend of mine has been bugging me for the last 2 Christmases to make these wee pies. Which I resented to an extent – what about all the other wonderful baking I supply her with on a regular basis? But it turns out she had a point. These are spectacular. My problem with shop-bought mince pies is the richness – there’s far too much thick, thick pastry and the mincemeat is too sweet for my tastes. I can eat one, with a cup of tea, at a push. These, though. These are dangerous. I’ll start with good intentions, but half an hour will pass and a tray will be reduced to a measly few. The trick is twofold – for one, the shop-bought mincemeat is diluted with a finely chopped apple. This not only makes it go further, but dampens the sweetness and improves the flavour. > Get the full recipe Secretly Healthy Pasta Bake Recipe by: James Morton So this probably isn’t what you might think of when you think ‘baking’, but this comes out the oven. So it IS baking. It’s even got ‘bake’ in the name! I had to include this here in this wee column because it is one of my favourite home-cooked everyday meals, especially as winter arrives and it starts to get chilly. This simple dish is great hot and, maybe surprisingly, it’s just as good cold. If not quite as heart-warming. I tend to make this quantity for two or three people, then save a couple of portions for taking in for lunch the next day. And the best thing about this pasta bake? Unlike most examples, this one’s healthy. Cheese quantities are modest, and it’s got so many vegetables hidden inside that if you make this for four people, everyone will get at least 4 portions of their 5-a-day. Yes, that much, and they really are hidden Not to say you shouldn’t be getting your fruit and veg from other sources too – it’s best to have as varied a diet as possible. Really, it’s been found we should all be having at least 8 or even 10 portions per day. If you fancy going down that route, this dish is the place to start. > Get the full recipe Caramel Muffins Recipe by: James Morton Muffins, of the American sort, are exquisitely suitable to adaptation. I know this because I spent months baking at a wee café, rotating recipes so that it seemed there was a new muffin every single day. It was easy: I switched out one type of berry for another – blueberry and raspberry being my most regular. Then you go begin to go crazy, and add white chocolate chips or maybe some hazelnuts to the mix. With just those 4 ingredients, there are 15 combinations to try, not including plain old muffins. Few ingredients, loads of different muffins. It’s just maths. Lazy mathematical muffins. But I think it gets genuinely interesting when you start fiddling with the core ingredients – yes, the potential for muffin variety increases exponentially and the recipe possibilities are endless. Some are good, some aren’t. This recipe is one of the very best and the simplest. Sugar. Caster sugar, the usual muffin choice, is seriously refined. All trace of impurity is removed. From these impurities, treacle is usually made. But if you replace caster with a dark brown sugar like muscovado, the muffins will be transformed into moist, dark, treacly and caramely delights. All it needs is to be drowned in a super-simple caramel sauce and the whole tray is gone in minutes. > Get the full recipe Gingernuts Recipe by: James Morton This may well be my new favourite recipe. So, so easy and very quick. The last 3 events I’ve been asked to go along to, I’ve turned up with a Kilner jar full of these, because you can knock them out whilst having a cup of tea in the morning. The key to success in any biscuit (or pastry, for that matter) is two-fold. No, you don’t need to have cold hands, or any other such myths. It’s all in the balance of two things: how much liquid you add, and how much you work the dough. The more liquid you add, whether it’s water, milk, eggs, cream, whatever, the easier your dough will be to come together and so the less you have to work it. If you’ve got a dry dough, though, the more you work it, the more it will come together, so you can use less liquid. > Get the full recipe Spiced Fruit Scones Recipe by: James Morton If you head down to Ayrshire, you’ll find the hospitals there don’t just boast about their excellent healthcare. If you’ve fallen and broken your ankle, they’re worth the trip simply for the quality of their scones. The selection and quality of this wee cake-like bread is unrivalled. You’ve got everything from plain to nibbed sugar to fruit to treacle to spiced and more. There truly is a scone for every palate, and the lovely ladies and gents of the WRVS will serve you with a smile. But fore those of not fortunate enough to live nearby (or indeed be in need of medical assistance), I tried to emulate the features of the ‘Crosshouse Scone’ in this wee recipe. To many, this will be heresy. An egg? THAT high of an oven temperature? Oh yes. For it gives something of unmatched lightness. Fluffy as a cloud. From this recipe, you can extrapolate every other variation. Want fruit scones? Leave the spice. Want plain? Leave the fruit as well. The only thing you might have to think about is treacle – just add a couple of tablespoons of treacle to your mix when you add the milk and egg. > Get the full recipe 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Signup to receive updates with Graham's Grazette. > Privacy & Cookies > Terms & Conditions Graham's Family Dairy Twitter Graham's Family Dairy Facebook Site by The Lane © Copyright Graham’s Family Dairy. All Rights Reserved.