Category: Dessert

BakeClass: Rhubarb Cake

This book was sent to me by the publisher at no cost.

Unknown.jpegAnneka Manning promises that I will “learn to bake brilliantly, step by step,” so that’s a rather exciting thought. I’ve been baking for years, but I am always interested in new recipes, and of course there are some things that just elude me (darn you sponge cake). So: lessons AND recipes!

Firstly: it’s a lovely looking book, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I appreciate that in a recipe book. It’s hefty (275-odd pages) at nearly A4 size, so I’m mighty glad I have a cookbook stand. The pages themselves are well laid out; mot recipes have a picture (which, I’m not completely a must-have-pictures girl, but it definitely adds something to the look of it), and the recipes are clearly laid out and so far, easy to follow. There are some ‘Baker’s tips’ on a few pages some of which seem obvious, others – well, I’ve made a few springform tin cakes, and it had never occurred to me to put the baking paper OVER the base and THEN clamp the sides in. I think this is a case of ‘dumb smart person’. So if nothing else I’ve learned that. IMG_0888.JPG

The first thing I’ve made is the Rhubarb Sour Cream Crumble Cake, which is in the ‘measure and beat’ section. Again, didn’t think I’d learn anything here, but um, I think I usually put the dry ingredients in before the wet but not consciously… so that’s an excellent pointer. And I’ve started picking up on the idea of room-temperature eggs, so this was yet another reminder about that. Guess I have to plan my baking a bit further in advance than I have tended in the past.

IMG_0889.JPGI made this because a friend gave me a pile of rhubarb sticks (whoo!), and we had people coming over for dinner. The cake batter itself turned out beautifully and I am once again glad I have a stand mixer, because it makes multitasking a reality. For some reason my crumble did not crumble, but turned into dough – perhaps too little flour? the butter was straight from the fridge but it was a fairly warm day, so that may have been a problem. At any rater I have dotted it over the top and spread it out a bit; it cooked fine and tasted perfectly nice.

Verdict in the end was very positive. We ended up with a bit left over but I think that was because our guests were being too polite to have extras.

 

Pistachio cupcakes

IMG_0875.JPG

I was given a book of cupcake recipes some time ago, but I’ve never made many. Thought I’d rectify that this year. These are pistachio ones – with ground pistachios in them and all.

Icing these involved making two batches of icing, because in making the first one I discovered that my class old-school sieve whose handle I’ve needed to fix for years was rusty when I noticed black spots all through my nice pristinely white icing. Sad.

They’re the beginning of a year of birthday cupcakes. Well, that’s the intention anyway.

Apricots

Note to self: do not leave a bowl of nearly-ripe apricots out of the fridge when going away for a few days and it’s going to get quite hot.

I lost about half the apricots a neighbour gave us, which was sad. With the remainder, I decided to experiment with making apricot spoon sweets, although because of said disaster I halved the recipe (a kilo of apricots is quite a lot). I got the recipe from Kate’s Salt IMG_0865.JPGSugar Smoke, which is a remarkable book of beauty (there are lots of variations online).

Making the sugar syrup and putting the apricots in for the first day was all very easy. The second day required a sugar thermometer. I acquired a sugar thermometer. I started boiling the sugar syrup. The thermometer would not attach to the side of the saucepan in a way that was useful, partly because there wasn’t enough syrup for it to reach. So I was boiling this syrup with the saucepan on an angle, so the tip of the thermometer could reach. This went on for some time. The recipe said it needed to reach 230F (my photo of the recipe cut off the C; lucky thermometers cater to old-fashioned Americans). Waiting… waiting… not reaching that temp… still waiting… bored… eh, I give up. How much difference will ~8F make, anyway?

Turns out, a bit. The recipe indicated that the syrup would cling to the apricots and be really quite thick. Yeh, not so much. It was still what I would describe as runny. Apparently I am a cowboy.

Result: two jars of apricots in a sugar syrup that I’m sure will still be tasty, even though not as stickily delightful as intended. Don’t know how I’ll use them yet…

Result, accidental: acknowledgement that I need to actually pay attention to recipes when baking.

 

Ice cream experiments

I have an ice cream machine because I now live somewhere where an occasional-use appliance does not make me screamingly mad about a lack of space.

Yesterday I made mince pie ice cream.

Take two mince pies; I used ones from Baker’s Delight. Pry them out of the despairing hands of your mince-pie-loving husband, and prepare to put up with the scolding of said man about how you’ve desecrated the poor things. Put mince pies into a whizzer of some sort and reduce it to crumbs – or chop finely, I guess.

Make vanilla ice cream; add the crumbs for the last five minutes of churning.

VERY tasty.

Pastry leftovers

IMG_0860These rather ugly looking things are the bits of puff pastry left over after making apricot turnovers. I got the idea from some cooking show I saw just a bit of (Rachel Khoo maybe?). I layered the pastry bits on top of each other, with jam in the middle; this jam was Valentina, from Just Add Moonshine. Then I baked it for… I’m not sure how long. Probably not quite long enough since they didn’t brown very much, but it was a very tasty way of using the scraps and it meant that I didn’t feel guilty about throwing them away. Nom.

(In the cooking show version, she was making the pastry layer of a tartlet; each layer was much bigger, of course, and they were all the same size; and then she froze it for a while so it stuck together better. After cooking she piped cream+yoghurt in little blobs, and then added something else too – orange maybe. The jam she used was a very quick, cheat’s marmalade.)

Brownies…

IMG_0844… but not as you know them.IMG_0843

No, these ones are made with sweet potato. Dehydrated sweet potato.

I’ve been experimenting with my dehydrator. I had rather hoped that dehydrating sweet potato would have them closer to a chip-like consistency. Alas, I was sorely mistaken. Nonetheless, I looked through The Ultimate Dehydrator Cookbook  for how I might use my newly dehydrated sett potato and when I saw brownies… well, I had to experiment. A brief google has revealed to me that sweet potato brownies are Quite The Thing with faux-paleo types who still want to have their sweet things, so I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised.

You rehydrate the sweet potato with boiling water; add honey, and then mix it with flour and cocoa, basically. Cook for 30 min or so and bam. Lovely moist brownies. The one problem I had with the recipe is that it tells you to pour over the water, leave for 20 minutes, and then ‘whisk’. Perhaps my sweet potato was too dehydrated or not enough, or more water wasn’t boiling enough (??), but there was no whisking possible with that vegetable. Bar mixing was required.

I’ll admit that they weren’t quite as sweet, or as toothsome, as I tend to prefer in brownies… so the swiss meringue buttercream got an outing. And that combo was indeed magnificent. It was gleeful giving it to people at work and then telling them it had sweet potato in it.

Swiss meringue buttercream

IMG_0836When Katherine, at the Sweetfest, mentioned that her swiss meringue buttercream recipe was from Martha Stewart, I wondered whether my Martha Stewart’s CAKES would have the recipe. And it did. And then we were invited to a friend’s house, and I had banana and walnut cake in the freezer already, and so… experiment! (Of course, it’s also online.)

Stewart’s version makes 9 cups’ worth and requires a swoon-worthy amount of eggs and sugar. So I’ve written the halved ingredients into the book itself, and then I realised that I only had 150g of butter anyway so I just figured out how much sugar and so on that required; the answer was 2 whites, and so on.

It’s a very straightforward process to make the frosting, happily. Yes there’s whisking of sugar and whites, but that didn’t take too long. The rest of the process was easy.

I didn’t flavour the buttercream aside from the vanilla, since it was going on a banana cake anyway. It was easy to spread onto the cake, which is an important thing for me. I had enough left over that I could have frosted the edges if I wanted, but decided that that would be a bit of overkill – especially when I discovered that the buttercream will last in the freezer for three months. So into a jar it goes. No idea where it will be used in the future.

A Middle Eastern Feast

UnknownOn Saturday night we decided to have friends over to play a rather obsession-making board game, and treat them to a Middle Eastern feast. They had lavished us with a beef bourguignon that left mine for dead and a delightful lemon tart last time, so it was only fair…

First course was a eggplant brushed with homemade chermoula, baked for 40 minutes, and topped with a burghul salad that included coriander, green olives, and nuts. It was fantastic although not actually as good as it could have been – I used those awesome long Lebanese eggplants, which were tasty but because they were skinny, didn’t get as mushy and baba ganoush-y as they would if they’d been fatter.Unknown

Next, my darling made him favourite dish – lamb and braised egg. We minced lamb eye fillet and cooked it with harissa, pistachios, preserved lemons and other good things, then braised eggs in it. Served with flat bread, it was utterly delightful. Both of these are from the fabulous Jerusalem, which is probably my favourite cook book ever.

Finally, Egyptian filo pudding, from Moorish. Cook filo sheets; break them into pieces and layer it with rosewater-soaked dried apricots and currants, and pistachios and almonds. Then cover the lot with boiling custard, basically, and cook… it was utterly, photoutterly delightful; more-ish, in fact. The picture does it no justice whatsoever.