In which I make another chiffon cake (this one chocolate), and Tas talks about Greek Cypriot food and makes me hungry.
Some of the recipes Tas mentions:
FlaounesInterview with Kate, whose jam I used in the cake.
Monday Morning Cooking Club interview
Tag: monday morning cooking club
Bread and butter
I don’t have the opportunity to cook epic desserts all that often, so I quite like grabbing them when they pop up. A crowd of thirteen is exactly that, so I went to The Feast Goes On (two of the editors of which I got to talk to a few months back) because I knew there were some desserts in there that I’d tagged as Must Try. And because I have a pile of oranges from my veg box, I went with the Orange Bread and Butter Pudding. (If I’d had more energy and thought about it ahead of time, I would have made the cake featured on the cover because WOAH.)
This bread and butter pudding is to your classic version as chocolate mud cake is to your average cocoa-only cake. For a start, it uses brioche. Yes. And then you segment three oranges (having zested two of them). Then you pour over warm marmalade – I used Kate’s De Milo marmalade which has oranges and blood plums and bits of crystallised ginger (and you can hear my interview with her here). Then it’s all about the cream and the eggs and not drooling over it.
It was magnificent. And dead easy, for something that looks and tastes so very epic. I’ll be making this again… when I need to make something to impress folks…
Acts of Kitchen: Kate makes jam
In which I make a chiffon cake and a kale (I know) and potato pie, and Kate talks about the amazing world of jams and jellies and chutneys and marmalades.
The Monday Morning Cooking Club, and my discussion with them.
Kate’s website, and Facebook page
An example of the amount of fruit she sometimes gets:
Acts of Kitchen: Monday Morning Cooking Club
In this episode, I CONQUER A NEMESIS – sponge cake! – and cook from The Feast Goes On, and talk to Natanya and Merelyn from the Monday Morning Cooking Club (you should totally check them out) about their books and cooking in general.
The sponge cake recipe to DEFEAT ALL ENEMIES. Look what I created! 
Bagels
What’s that you say? MORE bread? Oh yes, friends. More bread.
This time: bagels. I had vaguely thought about making them in the past but then the Monday Morning Cooking Club’s And the Feast Goes On has a recipe and… well, it looked easy. For some reason I always thought bagels were hard! (This recipe is basically the same.) Maybe I was thinking of croissants…
Anyway, today I made them.
Making the dough is a cinch – it’s just a yeasted dough. I very smugly used my stand mixer, but kneading by hand would be perfectly doable. Leave to rise; divide into 12 and poke a hole in the middle and shape a bit; leave to rise again. I didn’t take a photo at this point because they looked a bit weedy, so I thought I’d failed on my first attempt.
Then the fun bit – boil for two minutes on each side, sprinkle with salt (or sesame seed if you like). And look! They puffed up beautifully!
Then bake. And look at those lovelies!
Some of them are clearly a bit small… I think next time I might be ultra geeky and actually weigh each portion rather than thinking I can just wing it. I know, I know. Whatever.
And the exciting thing I discovered? You can freeze bagels easily. Just split them first, then toast them…
Acts of Kitchen 