Hot Hobart Berry Cake

A couple of weeks ago I was at a friend's place, and spent a little time browsing How to Cook a Galah by Laurel Evelyn Dyson. This is a fascinating book about Australian culinary history, with plenty of recipes. I copied down a couple of recipes to try out. This one is a sort of fruit sponge, originally titled Hot Hobart Mulberry Cake. Apparently the original cook had a friend with a mulberry tree.

The recipe is dead easy, with no fussy creaming of butter and sugar, just a simple stir through. I didn't have mulberries, but I did have some blackberries from the Borenore Hillside orchards and some boysenberries from my back garden, picked about a month ago and frozen. So here is my variant.

Recipe: Hot Hobart Berry Cake
450g berries
juice of one lemon
300ml light sour cream
1 tablespoon vanilla brandy
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Beat together the sour cream, vanilla and eggs.
• Sift the flour and sugar together
• Wash berries and dry well, then coat with lemon juice.
• Grease a round casserole dish.
• Stir the sour cream mix through the flour and sugar.
• Turn out into the greased dish.
• Pour berries on top.
• Bake for 45min-1 hour, until sponge is done in the centre when tested with a skewer.
• Serve warm, with cream or icecream.

Notes: There was no vanilla in the original, and of course the sour cream was not light. I'm also guessing that they used butter to grease a dish, rather than a spray of rice bran oil.

Vanilla brandy is what I have on my shelf, it's a small bottle of brandy with vanilla pods in it. Use 1 tsp vanilla essence and 2-3 tsp brandy for the closest equivalent. It's quite a thick batter, and I think the extra dash of liquid is helpful. Possibly the original cook's sour cream was thinner, or her lemons juicier or eggs larger.

It came out very delicious when warm. It did take quite some time for the centre to set - 55 min even in my fan forced oven. By that time the outer part was a little crusty.

It went very well with a scoop of vanilla icecream, and I think pouring cream would be a good option, too. On the whole I think this is better warm than cold, and even better with more berries. Luckily it microwaves up alright with 30-60 seconds a serve.

Happy Easter!

No, seriously, WTF are you thinking, Woollies? Hot cross buns for sale already? I'm barely over Xmas, and even though I didn't do the big dinner thing, we still have leftovers to get through. And seriously, EPIC is currently full of Summernats, not folkies. Your timing is just way off.

My main Xmas food discovery this year has been the Delicious recipe for fruit mince scrolls. Valli Little titles it the "Christmas Morning Crown". I made, well, not exactly it, but a variation of it for Xmas breakfast a couple of weeks ago. And then I liked it so much I did it again to host an arvo tea for some friends. And then again just because I got into a YEAST FRENZY!!!! In just one day I made the scrolls, no-knead bread, and some pizza bases. And then I ran out of yeast, or who knows what else might have happened.


I'm back at work now, so a frenzy like that is unlikely to recur for a bit. But the cool thing about the scrolls is that you can make them the day before you bake them. A little easy prep on Saturday, and then fresh baked scrolls on Sunday morning, oh my yes! The dough is a rich one and quite tender, since it's not really kneaded. It's also not a sweet dough, so you could even try a savoury filling. Ham, cheese, pineapple & jalapeno pizza scrolls, perhaps? Probably not with the icing, in that case.

Recipe: Iced Fruit Mince Scrolls

Dough:
225g bread flour
7g sachet yeast (1 teaspoon granules)
2 teaspoons sugar
a small pinch of salt
40g butter
1/2 cup warm milk


Filling:
1/2 cup fruit mince
2 tsp grand marnier
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup mixed glace fruit (chopped to half cherry size)
3 tablespoons soft brown sugar
45g softened butter.

Icing:
1/2 cup sifted icing sugar
1 - 2 tablespoons liquid (lemon juice, grand marnier, rosewater etc)

* Measure out the flour and add yeast, sugar and salt.
* Melt the butter, and mix in the warm milk, stirring well.
* Add the egg to the warm milk, and beat well.
* Make a well in the flour, and mix in the milk mixture, stirring flour in from the sides gradually to prevent lumps.
* Bring together in a rough soft ball, and cover with plastic wrap.
* Let rise in a warm place for about an hour. Or a not quite so warm place, for an hour and a half - until about doubled in size.

* While it's rising, prepare your chosen filling. For the fruit mince one, simply mix all ingredients together well, mashing the butter up with the fruit.

* Punch down, knead for half a minute, and turn out onto a floured surface.
* Roll or stretch it out to the size of a small oven tray.
* Spread filling out, leaving about 2cm space at the long edges.
* Roll up from the long edge so you have a filled sausage of dough.
* Grease and flour an oven tray, or line with silicone and flour lightly.
* Cut the sausage into 8-10 pieces, and arrange these in a ring on the tray. Keep cut side up, and let the sides just touch.
* Cover with a dampened teatowel or strong kitchen paper, and leave for another hour in the warm spot.
* Refrigerate overnight, if you want - bring back to room temperature before baking.
* Bake at 180C for 20 minutes, until golden.
* Cool for five to ten minutes before drizzling some icing over the top in swirls or zigzags.

Icing:
To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl, and add liquid by teaspoons, stirring well, until it is just liquid enough to drizzle.

Other filling options:
* 1/2 cup of your own fruit mix (currants, raisins and mixed peel), pre-soaked in tea or Grand Marnier, with 3 tablespoons soft brown sugar and 45g softened butter.

* Valli Little's original - 50g soft brown sugar and 85g softened butter, plus 1/3 cup sultanas, 1/3 cup mixed peel, 1/4 cup glace cherries, 2 tbsp chopped hazelnuts.

* Use your imagination. Jam, other dried fruits, chopped nuts, stewed apple or rhubarb, cinnamon sugar, spices etc.


Notes: The icing is also totally generic. Use a couple of drops of vanilla essence, plus water. Or Grand Marnier, lemon juice, lime juice, rosewater, or whatever you fancy. Spices can be added, too - I made one with 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon mixed in with the icing sugar.

Christmas and the Crazy Cake

You might want to know that there is a pre-Christmas market at EPIC on Thursday 23rd, and then a break until 15 Jan. And despite the rains, there's still plenty of cherries to be had.

And the day is nearly here. This year it's a really weird one for me. Hardly any cooking - no relatives visiting; and we're going to a friend's place for lunch, then going to Sydney to spend some time with B1 & M. I have made a cake, and in a vague effort to get in the spirit, I made a turkey risotto tonight. Though with pre-cooked turkey breast from Woollies, and packaged stock it is nowhere near as awesome as a proper leftover feast.

There have been work Xmas parties - three, count them: my unit, our group and the whole institute. And there were musical events - my teacher's studio concert, and the St Phil carols. I've contributed cookies and fruit plates and cakes and pies, and eaten mince pies and old-fashioned white Christmas, and some amazing coconut sticky rice (Maneerat has promised to give me her recipe for that.) The tree is up and the kittens, now small cats, have pulled off the first decorations to roll round the room.

The piccie here is of a "Crazy Cake", cut up and decked with fruit ready for the supper at St Phils. It's a strange recipe, that I couldn't resist trying out. I don't even remember how I found it, but the recipe comes from a vegetarian site. Maybe one of my facebook friends mentioned it, or something. It has no egg and no dairy, and was apparently a depression era invention.

Recipe: Crazy Cake
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sifted good quality cocoa
1 very high heaped teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
1 pinch salt
150g chocolate flakes (Dutch dark vlokken)
5 tablespoons rice bran oil
1 tablespoon raspberry vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup cold strong brewed coffee
1 tablespoon icing sugar


Preheat oven to 180C (170 fan-forced)
Sift together flour, sugar, cocoa, salt and bicarbonate of soda.
Mix the water, oil, vinegar, vanilla and coffee together.
Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix well.
Pour into a baking-paper lined 22cm square cake tin.
Bake for 30-40 minutes, until a test skewer comes out clean.
When cool, dust with icing sugar to serve.


Notes: Seriously, amazing. It works. The vinegar is important to react with the carb soda for leavening, it does not end up tasting vinegary. It's an American recipe, so the tablespoons are 15ml. (And the flakes weren't in there originally. I guess they were about 3/4 cup.)

If you look at the original recipe you'll see I have changed a bit, using coffee instead of water, a different type of vegetable oil and vinegar, a lot more cocoa, chocolate flakes, and a smidge less sugar and salt. And I lined the tin - and would recommend that strongly.

But I've got nothing on the commenter who said "1)I used whole wheat flour, 2)I used applesauce instead of oil, 3)I used a cup of sugar-free raspberry preserves instead of sugar, 4) I used rice milk rather than water, 5) I added 1 cup of Sunspire Grain Sweetened Chocolate Chips to the batter, 6)Rather than greasing the pan, I lined my cake pan with Reynolds Release Non-Stick Foil, which worked perfectly" I mean, is that even remotely the same cake?

If you do read the comments, you'll notice lots of other variations, and a couple of things that worried me - some said it was dry and tasteless. Well, lots of extra cocoa would have sorted the tasteless. I suspect it might go dry if you leave it in the oven too long? Anyway, mine came out moist and very fluffy. I may have overdone the bicarb. It actually seemed better the next day, when it had settled and solidified just slightly.

A big day

I had a big day of cooking today, turning out 2 dozen molasses cookies, an impossible pie, a pot of poached apricots, an arrabiata pasta sauce and a roast chook for dinner. The cookies are for a work morning tea on Tuesday, and I'm hoping the pie will freeze well, so I can take it to a Friday evening Xmas thing.

The pie is from a Kerry Greenwood book - if you don't know these already, I highly recommend her as a writer of delightful Melbourne based cosy mysteries. In the Phryne Fisher series, it is always and eternally 1928. Private detective Phryne is a poor girl turned rich, with sound feminist, socialist and anti-racist sentiments, and a love of fast cars, fine food and beautiful young men. The Corinna Chapman series is set in modern times, and stars a baker of ample size who lives in the a classical themed apartment complex with many other interesting characters. Several books feature recipes at the back. This impossible pie is from her latest, Dead Man's Chest.



Recipe: Kerry's Impossible Pie
1/2 cup plain flour
1 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup coconut
1/4 cup flaked almonds
4 eggs
vanilla essence to taste
125g melted butter
1 cup milk
extra 1/4 cup flaked almonds to sprinkle on top.

* Mix everything together thoroughly.
* Pour into a greased pie dish, and sprinkle reserved almonds on top.
* Bake at 170C for 35-45 minutes, or until it seems all just set.

If you have too much to go in the pie dish, the remnant can be baked in a ramekin or two. I did one today - you can see it sitting there on the festive green and red silicon baking sheets. This is a good idea anyway - that way you can have a test serve and check out the taste and texture before taking it to the party it's planned for. For me that's next Friday night. So I really really hope it freezes well! Serve this warm or cold, on its own or with some stewed fruit - perhaps poached apricots? Yes. By the way, poached apricots are very nice with a dash of rosewater and a sprinkle of toasted flaked almonds.

The molasses cookies were also nice and easy, and a great success. They're sweet but with complexity from the molasses and spices. I got this recipe from an American blog called "Not Martha". She has some wonderfully gorgeous stuff there, like mini gingerbread houses for perching on the side of a mug of hot chocolate, and miniature fruit pies.


Recipe 2: Sparkling Chewy Molasses Cookies, by Not Martha.
2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup sugar
3/4 of a 250g packet salted butter, softened
1 large egg
1/4 cup molasses, blackstrap works well here
about 1/2 cup demerara sugar

* Beat the butter, sugar, egg and molasses together well.
* Sift the flour, spice and baking soda together.
* Add the flour to the butter/sugar mix and mix well.
* Spoon out tablespoons of dough at a time, roll to balls in your hands.
* Roll the balls of dough in the demerara sugar.
* Lay them out on a baking tray, about 5cm apart.
* Bake at 170C for 12-15 minutes, until the edges are firming up.
* Let cool on the tray for a few minutes before moving to a cooling rack.


Notes: this is American, but keeping the same proportions is OK. Although I used an Australian tablespoon, and this may be why mine cracked more than the picture in the original. I also baked 2 trays at once in my convection oven. I made 2 dozen (yes, two are missing from the picture, how odd!), and froze the third dozen unbaked.

I have removed the salt, but used salted butter; and I used cassia, which is commonly used as cinnamon in the US. It's a bit hotter than true cinnamon.

Molasses is available from health food shops, or you could use treacle. Microwaving your jar of molasses for 20-30 seconds makes it easy to pour.

Demerara sugar is a light brown sugar made to a larger crystal than regular raw sugar, but you could use raw sugar if demerara is hard to come by.

A very belated Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday to me! I'm a hundred and three! I look like a monkey, I'm sure you'll agree.

OK, not really, but it was a contender for Worst. Birthday. Ever. I spent it on the couch snorting and snuffling with a nasty sinus infection, looking at all my facebook messages (which was nice) and failing to get a doctor's appointment. Luckily CALMS had appointments, so I got antibiotics on the Saturday and felt improved enough to bake, if not 100%. Even so, I had to get 2 more rounds of antibiotics after that one.

But damn, why was I writing that tripe? Pathetic whinging has its place but surely the entire point of a birthday post is CAKE!!! So let us discuss CAKE.

*deletes worst of whining*

The custom at work is to take in a cake for one's birthday. Tuesday was the next working day, so I baked on the public holiday Monday. I intended to make a chocolate chestnut cake, but I couldn't find the recipe in my half-hearted search, so instead I made a chocolate raspberry cake from Chocolate and Zucchini - not the blog, but the book. This is one of those cakes that's more like a fudgy mousse. Almost solid chocolate.

It's pretty easy to make, and quite impressive.

Recipe: Clotilde's Chocolate and Raspberry Cake, Cath's minor variation.
225g (and a bit) salted continental style butter
225g good dark chocolate
200g raspberries (frozen is fine)
Extra raspberries, to serve, optional.
200g sugar
4 eggs
50g self raising flour

• Defrost raspberries if needed, and mash well.
• Preheat the oven to 180C (or 160C fan forced)
• Grease a 25cm springform pan thoroughly with a little more butter.
• Roughly chop the butter and break up the chocolate, and place in a microwave safe bowl.
• Microwave for 20 seconds, then remove and stir well.
• Repeat this procedure until all the chocolate is melted.
• Set aside to cool for 5 minutes.
• Pour into a mixing bowl, and mix in the sugar, then the raspberry puree.
• One at a time, break each egg into a cup, mix with fork, then blend in to the mix.
• Sift the flour over and fold in gently.
• Bake for 30 minutes, then turn the oven off and leave to cool for 10 minutes.
• Remove from oven, place on a rack, run a knife around the edge and then loosen the spring form.
• Leave to cool for an hour, then cover and place in fridge overnight.

Notes: To serve, slice thinly as it is very rich. Add a dollop of cream and a raspberry or two if desired.

The variations I used were minor - salted butter rather than unsalted butter plus salt; 10g extra flour; self raising rather than plain. I added the little more flour because the mix was so sloppy I thought it would help. Using self-raising was an accident from vagueness, but it seems to have worked fine.

Smug mode, on!

Wow, has it really been over 3 months since I last posted? I wasn't intending to quit, but it's been hard to find the inspiration. I was rather annoyingly sick over a lot of winter, and also away on holiday for nearly a month and then immediately sick again when I got back. I did write a birthday cake post back in October, but it was so full of whining that I never got round to editing it to a fit state for publication. But now the weather is warming up and I'm feeling some inspiration at last!

Tonight I'm feeling VERY smug indeed. I got home from work about 6.30pm, and while The Bloke was off helping B1 with a dodgy internet connection, I managed to whip up a lentil and chorizo soup and a "spinach and cheese" damper made with silverbeet from the garden - and have dinner basically ready for 8pm when they came back. And to top it all off, we can have homemade gingerbread for dessert. A three part meal with all parts cooked from scratch! Not bad for a school night, if I do say so myself!

The soup was a recipe from AB, with some slight variation. The damper was a generic damper tweaked around. I'd picked the silverbeet on the weekend, as it was running to seed, and cleaned and steamed it and chucked it in the fridge, thinking of perhaps a mid-week frittata. The gingerbread I made on the weekend, to take in for a work morning tea. It's a recipe from an old favourite book, Elisabeth Ayrton's Cookery of England. A gorgeous fat Penguin paperback from 1977 full of regional and historical recipes; it was the first cookbook I ever had with history. And it has a recipe for home made crumpets which now that I think of it, I must do again sometime.

But first, here is tonight's menu:

Recipe 1: Red Lentil and Chorizo Soup
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
olive oil
1 tsp sweet paprika
3/4 tsp cumin
1 bay leaf
1 cup red lentils
120g pre-cooked chorizo, chopped
1 litre chicken stock
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 - 2 tsp balsamic vinegar, to taste.

1. Finely chop the onions and garlic, and fry in the oil until golden.
2. Add spices and fry for another minute, then add the lentils and stock and all other ingredients except the balsamic.
3. Simmer for 35 minutes, then mix well and taste.
4. Add the balsamic half a teaspoon at a time, stir, taste and continue until you are happy with the result.

Note: You could fry chorizo slices with the onion if you don't have it pre-cooked on hand. Balsamic vinegar varies a lot in strength so it's best not to overdo it. Also, AB's recipe has 2 finely chopped celery sticks and specifies 800ml homemade stock. I used a tetrapack of Campbells, sorry AB!


Recipe 2: Silverbeet and Cheese Damper
300g white self-raising flour
150g wholemeal self-raising flour
90g butter
300g cooked, cooled, chopped silverbeet or spinach
120g sharp cheddar, grated
about 100ml milk
salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 200C
2. Cube the butter and rub it into the flour.
3. Add the cheese and silverbeet and mix well.
4. Add the milk bit by bit, stirring well, until it comes together in a soft, but not sticky, dough.
5. Dollop onto a baking sheet
6. Bake 30-40 minutes, until golden and a skewer comes out clean.

Notes: Drain the spinach really well after cooking. Squish it down hard to get as much water out as possible. Also, this would be good with fetta and some spring onions, but I didn't have any.


Recipe 3: Yorkshire Gingerbread
300g self-raising flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
120g chopped dates
150g treacle or golden syrup
120g dark brown sugar
90g butter
1 egg
3/4 tsp bicarb soda, dissolved in 3 tsp milk

1. Preheat oven to 160C
2. Heat the butter and syrup in a small saucepan until the butter is melted. Set aside to cool a little.
3. Grease and flour a 25cm square cake tin.
4. Sieve flour, salt and spices together.
5. Add dates and mix well.
6. Beat together the egg and sugar.
7. Add the butter/syrup mix in dollops, to the flour, mixing as you go and alternating with dollops of the egg/sugar mix.
8. Stir in the bicarb/milk mix, and add water if the dough needs a little softening. It should be soft but not sloppy.
9. Dollop into cake tin and smooth out top.
10. Bake for 1.5 hours or until skewer comes out clean.
11. Cool on a rack.

Notes: This is quite a dry
gingerbread, and goes very well sliced thin, and buttered. I used a mix of 100g golden syrup and 50g treacle. I varied it by adding 30g of finely chopped glace ginger to the mix, which I definitely recommend.

Easy fruit loaf

This is the tag end of a date, ginger and walnut loaf that I made a few weeks ago, to a dead simple recipe. I've made it three times now. The first time I encountered it was as a dessert, when our Easter visitor AB served it hot with a scoop of icecream. Mostly I've had it as a breakfast or snack loaf, either with butter or just plain. OK, once with Nutella. It takes five minutes to prepare, then a little over half a hour to bake.

The funniest thing about the recipe that A left me is the handwritten corrections: cook for 35-40 minutes, crossed out, no, 33 mins? 35-36 mins! Now this is not foolish - AB is one sharp cookie. I have also had problems working out the time in my own oven. The loaf seems cooked and I poke a skewer in it and nothing clings. Yet when I cut it, there is a little unbaked patch in the middle. I must be missing the exact spot. So, yeah, I think it must be 38 minutes. Perhaps I'll get it right next time.


Recipe: Yoghurt Fruit Loaf
1 cup self raising flour
1 cup Greek yoghurt
1/2 cup soft brown sugar
1 cup dried fruit, chopped if large
1/2 cup nuts, chopped roughly
1/4 cup dessicated coconut

* Preheat oven to 170C
* Grease or line or otherwise prepare a 22x8cm loaf tin
* Mix all ingredients together
* Dollop out into the loaf tin
* Bake for 33 mins? 35-38 mins or until a skewer inserted dead centre (and not a little bit off-centre) comes out clean.
* Cool in tin for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.
* Serve warm, or later on, toasted.


Note: AB likes dried cranberries, and I do too. Especially with some glace orange peel. Raisins and currants and chopped dried apricot works well, too. Date and walnut and glace ginger is another good option, but don't leave out the dessicated coconut like I did this time. The texture isn't as good without it. Full fat Greek yoghurt is best, but low fat is OK too.


And in other news, the freezer-emptying project continues. I've made a quick pasta arrabiata with a tub of frozen roast tomatoes, and random muffins with frozen blackberries and raspberries this morning. I'm finding that adding yoghurt to the random mix helps to keep them moister when cold.

The World's Greatest Puddings

Well, that's arguable. Lemon delicious is top, without any doubt, and I won't take arguments! But what's next? Sticky date? Sussex Pond? Christmas? Marmalade roly-poly? Spotted dick? Self-saucing chocolate is a fine candidate, and it even seems to be an Australian invention. Last weekend and the previous one we had a friend round for a casual dinner, and I made puddings.

The self-saucing chocolate pudding didn't come out perfectly. I found a recipe on Taste.com that had a different technique than my old recipe, and I tried that with my recipe's ingredients. The more modern one has you melt the butter, rather than rub it in. It came out a bit too fluffy - it fell apart - and with not enough sauce. So I'll give you my old recipe instead.

Recipe 1: Self-saucing Chocolate Pudding
1 cup self-raising flour
4 tablespoons cocoa
75g butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup boiling water

Beat eggs together in a cup.
Cream butter and half of the sugar.
Slowly add in eggs
Sift flour and half of the cocoa together.
Fold flour/cocoa mix into the butter/sugar/egg mixture, adding milk and vanilla as you go to keep the mixture soft.
Turn into buttered baking dish.
Sprinkle over the remaining half cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of (sifted) cocoa.
Pour over boiling water.
Bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes.

Notes: Serve with vanilla icecream, or plain pouring cream. I used a couple of nips of that vanilla vodka, and correspondingly less water. And I think I needed to reduce my oven temperature a bit. My oven is very fast, even without the fan setting on.

And now for the lemon pudding - this was good. Very good. The top is maybe a tiny bit browner than I'd wish, so perhaps I should have reduced heat a little. But it's light and fluffy and there's plenty of sauce. It doesn't really need any icecream or cream, it's fine all by itself.

Recipe 1: Lemon Delicious Pudding
1 oz butter (30g)
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon grated lemon rind
2 tablespoons plain flour
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup milk
small pinch salt

Cream butter and sugar together.
Gradually beat in egg yolks and lemon rind.
Fold in flour.
Mix in lemon juice.
Slowly add milk.
Whisk eggwhites stiff with the salt.
Fold eggwhites through.
Pour into pudding dish.
Place dish in baking pan of water, and bake at 175C for 45 minutes.

Notes: Do not be alarmed that the mixture is very liquid. This serves 4, or as we did, 3 generously. You could serve with vanilla icecream, cream, or better yet, some of that Maggie Beer lemon and orange curd. But it's fine just as it comes.

Maple Apricot Scones

This was a nice easy breakfast for a weekend morning. I found the basic recipe in Delicious, labelled as "Buttermilk Scones", suggested to accompany a soup. What appealled to me most is the complete lack of any butter. I do love a good scone, and my friend B1 makes the best date scones ever. But I can't be bothered with that rubbing fat into flour first thing in the morning. That's why I like muffins so much. The technique is simply "dump stuff in bowl, stir". I can do that before my coffee.


Recipe: Maple Apricot Scones
2 cups self raising flour
pinch salt
1/2 cup chopped dried apricot
1 cup buttermilk
2 tblsp maple syrup
a little extra flour
Mix the flour, salt and apricot in a bowl.
Mix the maple syrup into the buttermilk.
Combine the mixes, and stir well.
Dump onto a flour-coated baking tray, turn over to cover the top with flour.
Pat it out to a rough circle, and cut into 8 triangles.
Brush top with a little extra buttermilk (the scrapings from the measuring jug will do.)
Bake at 180C for 15 minutes.
To serve, split in half and butter if desired.

Notes: The original recipe does not contain fruit, and suggests more kneading. And cutting in rounds. Of course you could use any fruit you like - sultanas, dates, currants. I had a packet of chopped dried apricot, and the bloke does not like dates. I also found this mix to be too sticky for easy kneading. So I just dumped it out on the tray and cut triangles. Fussing with cutters is also not for pre-coffee times, and anyway, the less you knead a flour-based dough, the more tender it is.

These are even low fat, since buttermilk does not contain butter. It's a cultured product, very like an unflavoured drinking yoghurt. Traditionally it's made from the leftover milk after the butter has been extracted. I wonder now if it would work with wholemeal flour, to be even healthier. Next time, perhaps.

Internet Salmagundi XIV

I haven't done one of these for ages. It's facebook's fault. I keep posting fun and interesting links to facebook and forgetting to do it here. So here's a collection for amusement.

Food Related

I can't believe I only just found epicute this week. Cute food - cakes, bento and lollies, mostly. Kind of opposite to cakewrecks, which I have mentioned before.

Speaking of cakes, here are some very wrong ideas for cakes: the tomato soup cake and the beer cheese cake with bacon icing. Words fail me.

These are supposed to be the best chocolate chip cookies ever. They contain more salt than you would expect.

And I really fancy making Alton Brown's granola. Though it is winter, and I'm more into porridge than cold cereal at this time of year.

Is it worth making your own? Well, maybe, maybe not - this article examines a few cases. It's where I found the link to the granola recipe, which is definitely something to make at home for both the author and me. Jam and marmalade, too, for me. But I'm not sure I eat enough yoghurt to justify making it, and bagels seem too time intensive to be a regular.

And in local news: Stonesoup has a book launch coming up at Gunning this weekend. I'd like to go but may be exhausted by the rounds of other events this week.

Not Food

First, I'm honoured to have been included by the Darling Sisters in their list of bloggy goodness.

This is cool musical toy to play with.

This letter from a former slave to his former master amused me no end.

If you like Buffy and hate Twilight, here is an excellent antidote. Personally I couldn't care less if some vampires sparkle, but the romanticisation of stalking and abuse is just disgusting.

And while we're on the politics of fantasy/SF, here is an thought-provoking critique of the Star Wars series.

And for happy geekery: a collection of periodic tables. Some are works of art, some are simply comedy.

Old Standards

I have not much to report, since I've been sick again. I sometimes think I should just hibernate until spring. Towards the end of the week I picked up, and I have done a little cooking of the easy kind. I made a chicken curry from paste, and a 3-tins dahl - though it was only one tin this time, as I had kidney beans and home roasted tomatoes and red capsicum in the freezer.

I also made some more muffins this morning - these ones are blackberry and lillipilli. I used the same recipe as for last week's cranberry and orange, except with blackberries swapped for cranberries, and a half jar of lillipilli jelly for the marmalade. And no orange flower water and sugar - the jelly is sweet enough for me. Though I did add sprinkle of cassia & sugar on top. Also, I left the oven on a sensible temperature, and they were nicely done in 20 minutes.

This dahl and the generic muffins are old standards that take very little thinking. The other old standard was the takeaway the bloke bought from the our favourite pide house, TurkOz in Dickson. Spinach and cheese, and lamb, tomato and capsicum pide, and also some bread and hummous. I used some of the bread to make cheese, chutney and parsley toasties. Lots of parsley. Parsley is high in vitamin C and iron, and it is too a salad vegetable!

Don't Clean The Stove!

Not while baking, anyway. The stove still had a few sticky patches from yesterday's chutney - on the oven door handle, so I didn't notice it yesterday. This morning when I popped a batch of muffins in, I noticed the stickiness. So I grabbed a sponge, wiped away, and cleverly managed to shift the temperature dial from 190 to 230. So there I was, sitting in the lounge, confident that the timer would go off in good time to test them. Not being in the kitchen, I didn't even get the smell cue. Bugger.

They were not burned through, so trimming off all the burned bits was actually possible. I cut off the tops and scooped out the crumb - I had two inside bits of muffin and a couple of feijoas for breakfast. Obviously I wouldn't present these to guests, but it would be a waste to just chuck them in the bin when parts of them are still edible! It was lucky that I'd decided on Texas muffins, so that cutting off the crusts actually left some muffin for my breakfast.

I had been very pleased with my muffin idea. I had about half a jar of a light sweet orange marmalade left behind by guests, that I was not ever going to eat. Using it in muffins seemed like a good plan. I also found some frozen cranberries at one of the chicken shops at Belco markets a month or two ago. And while I've seen recipes using whole cranberries in muffins or teacakes, I've never made any until now. The berries are very sharp, so the muffin needs to be sweeter than usual to compensate. They are good, really!

The rest of Sunday worked out a bit curate's eggish, too. I went for what should have been a lovely lake shore walk with B2, combined with a visit to Kingston markets. I bought no knickknacks - I really have too much Stuff and ought to prune rather than buy. I was also resistant to the lure of yet more jams, honeys, spice pastes, chilli sauces etc. I need to use some of them up before buying new ones. I did buy some great fat green olives, a crusty Italian loaf with rosemary and roast garlic, and a couple of packs of Wagonga coffee. And for a real luxury, some gorgeous fresh raspberries.

The problem was that although it was sunny when we left, an icy cold rain started falling when we were a good 10 minutes walk away from shelter. Not pleasant at all, we had no choice but to soldier on back to the car. That bit was no fun, and now I've come over all dwarfish. (That's sneezy and grumpy and dopey and sleepy.) Bugger.

Recipe: Cranberry Marmalade Muffins
1 cup white selfraising flour
1 cup wholemeal selfraising flour
1 1/2 cups frozen cranberries
1 egg
4 tablespoons sunflower oil
4 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup orange marmalade
1/2 teaspoon orange flower water
* Preheat oven to 190C.
* Warm marmalade slightly so it will mix easily - 30 seconds microwave.
* Mix marmalade, milk, oil, egg and orange flower water well in a small bowl.
* Mix flours and sugar in a larger bowl.
* Mix cranberries through the flour, toss to coat.
* Mix liquids through the flour mixture
* Spoon into 6 Texas muffin cups
* Bake for 25 minutes or until done


Notes: Don't turn the oven up!

The Coastal Donna Hay Marathon

Last weekend, and some days surrounding it, I went to the coast with B1 & B2. We had a great chillout time - while we had planned to do some walks, it rained a bit too much so we spent most of the time indoors, reading and cooking. This is no hardship when the view from the couch looks like this picture.

We did do some shopping - food in Bateman's Bay, hippie clothes and pottery in Mogo - and we went to The River Moruya to celebrate B2's birthday in style. And we had a sandwich lunch in Mogo at Suzanne's bakery - they were out of the fabulous sourdough for retail, but not for the cafe, so we got to eat some anyway. Ha!

The cooking was an adventure. The stove looks like this: note the kettle on side giving scale. The oven is large enough for 2 small muffin trays or one cake, there are two hotplates on top, but you can't use them at the same time. There is also a microwave and an electric frying pan.

We did pretty well with it. We made hotcakes and risotto in the frying pan, and stuffed capsicums, roast cauliflower, and two lots of cake in the oven. The hotplate on top I used only twice. Once, to heat up some pumpkin soup, and the second time, for a cake topping. Dinner on day one was mugs of pumpkin & chestnut soup from my freezer, augmented with leftover pumpkin from the Easter pie-baking. A good post-driving snack dinner, with added cheese, biscuits, cured salmon remnants, avocado, olives and fruit.

All of our recipe cooking came from the latest Donna Hay magazine (Autumn 2009). B1 had brought it along with an eye to the bundt cake feature, and as we browsed it, more and more good ideas came to mind.

The hotcakes, as pictured on the magazine cover, were fabulous, and quite simple. I'm not sure why I don't regularly make these. It does require planned shopping, I suppose, though fresh ricotta and buttermilk are the only ingredients I don't keep in stock all the time. We used fresh blueberries, but of course frozen would do. I'll pop in the recipe at the end of this post.

The Donna Hay web people have posted the recipe to the Cinnamon-sugar Maple Bundt Cakes, so you can go look at it there. They are worth trying: thick textured, moist and fruity, with a fun cinnamon-sugar coating like a doughnut. They are also quite easy to make, though grating the apples is a bit of a pain. And they keep well.

These were less successful than the hotcakes, probably for a number of reasons. Not being in possession of any mini-bundt tins, I used B1's pair of rose-shaped mini cake silicon forms. These ended up being a bit overfull of the mix, and the cooking time was way wrong. The first batch out of the oven were underdone on the bottom and stuck to the pans - despite being apparently done by skewer test. The second batch I left a lot longer, and they came out fine. It could well be the oven: perhaps two batches prevents the heat circulating properly. Or the heat is too easily let out.

The other bundt cake that B1 made was a fig and date one. This worked better - the single tin may have helped. I made the toffee coating for it, and I think there was too much. If you have bought this mag and want to make this cake, try using half the amount of toffee. It's amazing when first made - shades of sticky date pudding, with crisp toffee like a brulee coating. The toffee topping softens after a day, though, as you'd expect. It's still good, just not so much of a showpiece.

And just so you don't think we ate nothing but sweets, we also made the roast cauliflower and almond risotto from that issue. This is actually misnamed: it's a simple risotto flavoured with fresh sage. The cauliflower served alongside. The risotto is just butter, onion, sage, rice, sherry, veggie stock and parmesan. Then you add a side of the cauli, and some slivers of washed rind cheese - Taleggio if you can get it. The result is totally wonderful, and I want to do it again. With one caveat: use good stock. The standard Campbells brand veggie stock is a bit salty and rather unsubtle. I'd prefer a good chicken stock, and maybe some white wine.


Recipe 1: Ricotta Hotcakes
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar
4 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg whites, whisked stiff
200g ricotta
butter, to fry
1 cup blueberries (optional)
Mix the egg yolks, buttermilk and vanilla well.
Combine this with the flour and sugar.
Fold through the whisked egg whites and the blueberries.
Fry up in batches, using about 2-3 tablespoons of batter per hotcake.
Allow 3-4 minutes per side, or until puffed and golden.

Notes: You'll need a slightly lower heat than with regular pancakes as these are thick, and the middle needs to cook before the outsides burn. Serve with maple syrup. Or lemon and sugar. Or maple butter if you can be bothered making it. We couldn't.


Recipe 2: Roast Cauliflower with Sage & Almonds
500g cauliflower florets
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 bunch sage
1/4 cup chopped almonds
Preheat oven to 220C.
Toss the cauliflower into a baking tray with the salt, pepper and oil.
Roast for 15 minutes.
Strip whole leaves off the sage, discarding stalks, and chop the almonds.
Add to the pan and roast a further 5-10 minutes until cauliflower is golden and sage is crisp.


Notes: Serve this as a veggie side to anything you like, but it's especially good with a cheesy sage risotto! But Donna, darls, what on earth do you mean by "a bunch" of sage? Who knows? In general supermarket sales, sage seems to come in smaller packs than parsley or coriander, so maybe it's about 1/4 cup of leaves, loose-packed? Whatever.

The last of Easter

Isn't this pretty? That was my entree plate for our annual Easter dinner - cured salmon, pumpernickel, herbed cream cheese, cornichons and assorted crudites. With pink salt for dipping the radishes.

I was going to post a hot cross bun picture, but I only took one and it was crap. Sorry about that, but here's the recipe anyway. I modified it from a very good book: Baker, by Dean Brettschneider and Lauraine Jacobs. It's a collection of recipes from famous bakeries all over Australia and New Zealand - though there are none from Canberra. They missed Silo and Cornucopia, and Knead and Flute didn't exist when the book was published.

There's a long essay chapter on the principles of baking, which is really helpful for general background knowledge and troubleshooting. It covers pastry and cakes as well as bread baking and other yeast doughs. Though I own neither a dough thermometer nor a means of keeping dough at a very specific temperature. Never mind, yeast is quite tolerant: just watch for the size and texture rather than the time, and use the indent test for the final proofing.


Recipe: Hot Cross Buns
120g raisins
80g currants
60g mixed peel
560g wholemeal bread mix
1 egg
60g butter, melted
250ml warm milk
1/2 teaspoon each of ground ginger, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg
2 teaspoons cinnamon
A bit over 1 cup plain flour, extra


* Soak the raisins and currants in warm water for 15 minutes. Drain and add mixed peel, and leave to absorb remaining moisture for an hour in a bowl, or overnight in a sieve.

* Make up the bread mix with quantities of yeast, salt and sugar as on your packet directions.

* Mix the milk, butter and egg well, and check the liquid measurement with your bread mix. Add more milk to top up to the required level if necessary. Make sure it is lukewarm, not hot. About 30C.

* Mix milk into flour, and start kneading. Work the dough for about 8 minutes, until moderately elastic. Rest for 10 minutes.

* Add the spices, and knead the dough for another 7 minutes until fully developed - dough is silky, elastic, and stretches smoothly.

* Knead through the fruit gently until well mixed.

* Turn dough into an oiled bowl, cover with cling wrap with plenty of overhang - not tucked around the dough ball but going up the inside of the bowl.

* Leave in a warm spot for one hour, or until doubled in bulk.

* Punch down dough, turn out onto a lightly floured board, and split into twelve parts. Round each one into a ball by cupping it in your hand and rolling a bit. Put balls of dough onto a lined baking tray in a 3x4 array.

* Cover in clingfilm and leave to rise again for 45min, or until doubled again. An indentation with your finger will spring back slowly but not quite completely when this is ready. (If quickly, it's not done yet; if not at all, it's overproofed.)

* Add flour and water paste crosses: 1 cup flour, mixed with water to paste, piped out from a cut corner on a sandwich bag. (Or don't bother with this and just do fruit buns, since Easter is well over now.)

* Bake buns at 200C for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown, turning tray about halfway though for evenness.

* Eat hot with plenty of good quality butter!

Notes: This recipe comes from the New Norcia bakery. The original has a sticky lemon glaze, which I don't bother with. It also has sultanas instead of raisins, coriander rather than cardamom, and all white flour. The flour change was a random factor based on what was actually in the pantry, but I like it so I will keep it. I bought the bread mix on special, it's got some citric acid and salt in it already. If I don't have a bread mix on hand next time, I'll use a half and half mix of wholemeal and white flour. I also fancy soaking the fruit in tea or brandy rather than plain water, and swapping some chopped dried apricot for some of the raisins.

If you do not have a packet of bread mix, then use:
500g strong flour
2 tablespoons raw sugar
2 level teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon citric acid ("bread improver")
1 tablespoon dried yeast

Next post: Donna Hay marathon at the coast!

Wheatless, Eggless, Butterless, Milkless, Sugarless... Cake?

I stumbled on this recipe in a post by The Old Foodie, who is actually a not-so-old person interested in Old Food. This is a cake from the 1918 wartime, and it sounds completely impossible that such a thing could be edible. And yet - cinnamon, raisins and cornmeal... that could be pretty good.

It might perhaps be a decent breakfast type of cake? Not too rich, not too sweet, perhaps it could work? I like sweet food in the morning, but not too sweet. I go for things like toast and marmalade, a peanut butter and honey sandwich, fruit yoghurt, porridge with golden syrup, or hot cross buns... Definitely not a dessert level of sweetness.

I made some muffins on Tuesday that I am just going to have to throw out. I found a White Wings "low fat" variety muffin packet mix up the back of the pantry, that I bought in a fit of unreason when I tried out Weight Watchers a few years back. I boldly challenged my prejudices about diet foods! And in consequence, had them confirmed in spades. These aren't even "diet" muffins, just low-fat. And ingredient number one on the list is not flour, but sugar. The orange-poppy ones are very nasty, and the chocolate ones are sorta kinda OKish, if you think of them as cake. I've eaten half a one, and not actually spat it out like I did with the orange.

Anyway, here is the original recipe, copied over for convenience.

Wheatless, Eggless, Butterless, Milkless, Sugarless Cake
1 cup corn syrup
2 cups water
2 cups raisins
2 tablespoons fat
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 ½ cups fine cornmeal, 2 cups rye flour; or, 3 ½ cups wholewheat flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder, or, ½ teaspoon soda

Cook corn syrup, water, raisins, fat, salt and spices slowly 15 minutes. When cool, add flour, soda or baking powder, thoroughly blended. Bake in slow oven 1 hour. The longer this cake is kept, the better the texture and flavor. This recipe is sufficient to fill one medium-sized bread pan.

-----

So how would I go about that?

It's an American recipe, and the corn products they use are not common here. You can substitute a few things, though. This page from The Joy of Baking is quite useful to give you ideas. Also, as you see, the recipe uses an out-dated sense of "sugarless". It actually does contain sugars, just not the granulated white stuff that presumably was in short supply in 1918.

"Fat" - that is pretty vague. I'm personally inclined to toss the butterless aspect and go for real butter here. Obviously if you wanted that austerity/vegan version you could go for a vegetable shortening like margarine, or maybe an oil. I had a quarter pack of butter left after the seedcake, which is about double the amount you officially want. Since this is an austerity recipe, a little extra is unlikely to hurt, so I used it all. (Remembering that 1 US tbsp=15ml - and that's about 15g, since butter and water weigh much the same.)

Salt - I tend to reduce this. A small pinch, rather than a teaspoon works better for my taste.

"Corn syrup" - We can actually buy corn syrup here. The recipe doesn't say whether light (very mild) or dark (stronger flavoured). IGA & Woolies both stock the imported Karo brand: it's kept near the sugar and baking supplies. But I like the taste of golden syrup, so I'll stick with that. Honey is another obvious option. Or I suppose you could even use sugar.

"Cornmeal" - fine polenta will do here. But absolutely not cornflour/cornstarch. I don't quite understand why the different quantities of different flour options. I'm only baking one, though. If it works, I may try a different flour some other time.

"Raisins" - in the US, they call sultanas "golden raisins". I strongly prefer the dark raisins, but you could legitimately use sultanas. Or perhaps notice that this recipe is quite big on alternatives, and just use any dried fruit you fancied.

And a "slow" oven is 140-150C.

-----

How did it work? Surprisingly well! I may well even make it again.

I was worried at a couple of points. The mix is very liquid, and it just poured into the loaf pan. It didn't rise at all, that I noticed, the top is totally flat. I think I took it out of the pan a little early: it almost cracked. I'd recommend that you let it cool in the pan for fifteen minutes or so, for safety.

The recipe claims that it's best as it gets older, but I cut a slice when it was still warm. It was nice - the crust was a bit chewy, the crumb quite soft and packed with juicy raisins. I've also tried it cold, yesterday morning, and it does indeed work for me as a breakfast item. It's got cereal, fruit and sugar and is not too cloying. Last night I tried heating up a chunk, to pretend it was a pudding, but this was less successful. It seemed drier when warm.

The raisin flavour in this cake is very strong. And I mean very strong indeed: I find that it overpowers the golden syrup, which is no mean feat. I rather like the idea of swapping in chopped dates for a different effect. And after my recent post on Hot Cross Buns, perhaps adding in some mixed peel and using orange juice instead of water might be a good idea.

So there you go: surprise! It's actually rather good.

Seedcake for tea

Seedcake is so very old-fashioned. You never see it in a cafe, but it is lovely. This one is a simple plain cake with hints of orange. I made it for a solemn occasion: a funeral for a friend's much-loved cat. It has a lovely "tea at the vicarage" charm about it, and it's not bad with a glass or 7 of sparkling, either. We finished it off this afternoon with a cuppa on the back deck, among the scattered gardening tools.

I got the recipe from a book of "British and Irish Cooking", a 1978 publication by Sally Morris. I bought it for $1.95. Not second hand, that was the recommended retail price. It's a wonderful old book, with recipes for plum cake, steak and kidney pie, Chelsea buns, Richmond Maids of Honour and much more. Some of them even use lard and suet.

I've always contended that British food is, despite its reputation, actually pretty bloody wonderful. I think that some of its bum rap comes from the war years, and the many years after when rationing was in force, and there was simply not enough butter, cream, bacon and eggs and so on. And of course, a lot of the best of it was simply done in private. Budget travellers encountered the horrendous cheap rooming houses with landladies dishing up over-boiled cabbage and a lump or two of gristle. Meanwhile the upper crust was feasting on Scottish salmon, rare roast beef with horseradish, devilled kidneys, stilton cheese and fresh watercress, and taking afternoon tea with seedcake, scones, strawberries and clotted cream.

Seed cake is worth reviving, I think.

Recipe: Seedcake
1 orange
3/4 cup salted butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon orange flower water
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
2 tablespoons caraway seeds
1 cup icing sugar
Zest the orange finely, and juice it.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Add the orange zest, orange flower water, and caraway seeds.
Sift the flour, and fold in gently in several batches.
Use about 2 tablespoons of the orange juice to lighten it, but keep the batter quite thick.
Tip into a 20cm cake pan, prepared as you usually prefer.
Bake at 180 for 40-50 minutes, or until a testing skewer comes out clean.
Allow to cool before icing.

To make the icing, sift 1 cup of icing sugar into a bowl. Add two teaspoons of orange juice, and mix well. If it seems too thick, add a little more. Smooth over the top of the cake, allowing a little to drizzle down the sides.

Notes:
3/4 cup of butter is the measure in the original - odd, for a British book. It's a simple 3/4 packet, about 185g. And this cake mixture has a tendency to curdle at the addition of the eggs. It's common with this style of cake. Do not worry if that happens, just keep going and the flour will smooth it all out again.

If you are concerned about the age of your caraway seeds, soak them in the orange juice for half an hour first. They come out quite chewy in texture, but they are very small, so it doesn't really matter. Orange flower water is also known as neroli extract. A single drop of the essential oil might perhaps work instead, but it's a lot more powerful than the water. Be careful - or just skip it.

ORLY, Delicious?

I mentioned back when I was making the zucchini muffins that Delicious magazine this month has a zucchini bread recipe. And my zucchini plant is continuing production. I even had the traditional experience of discovering one as thick as my wrist, that I was sure hadn't existed on the previous day. So, well. Zucchini bread. Here it is.

I made it yesterday, and I'm eating some for breakfast as I write this. I'll put the recipe under the fold, but here are some selected quotes from the magazine. "Savoury Breads have taken over from quiche as the perfect lunch snack", and "a savoury fruit and nut bread served with soft cheeses and prosciutto is the perfect lunchtime snack." (March '09 issue, p73)

Honestly, Valli, what were you thinking? Did they swap a different recipe in at the last minute? This recipe contains nearly 400g of sugar, and no ingredient that might be construed as savoury, unless you count the zucchini. I reduced the sugar in my version, and it's actually pretty nice, but I do feel that I'm eating cake for breakfast. I can imagine it with cream cheese, but prosciutto would be going too far.

Recipe: Zucchini Bread
400g self-raising flour
200ml melted butter & sunflower oil
1 heaped tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
3 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 large zucchini, grated
3/4 cup pecans
1/2 cup dried cranberries (craisins)
* Find a loaf tin that holds about 2 litres, and prepare tin as you prefer for baking.
* Preheat oven to 150C.
* In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients except the flour and butter/oil. Stir very thoroughly to distribute the spices evenly.
* Mix through the butter/oil blend well, then finally fold in the flour gently.
* Pour into the loaf tin, and bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours, or until a testing skewer comes out clean.
* Cool in the pan for about 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack.

Notes:
Original recipe by Valli Little, Delicious magazine. This variant of mine is different in that:
1. I use self-raising flour, instead of plain plus bicarb plus baking powder.
2. I used 1/2 tsp allspice instead of 1/4 tsp mixed spice, and heaped up the cinnamon. Next time I think I'll add nutmeg, too.
3. I reduced the caster sugar from 1 1/3 cups to 3/4 cup. This could go lower.
4. 200ml of sunflower oil in the original became a melted butter & oil mix, because, well, I had butter to use up.
5. I used a bit more fruit and nuts. It could go even more, I think.
6. I used pecans, the Bloke hates walnuts. (But it might be too sweet for him anyway.)
7. I changed the mixing order a bit.

Also, I really wish she'd given a cup or weight measure for the zucchini. "Three large ones" is a bit vague. I suspect she didn't mean my huge one. I used that and a small-medium one, guesstimating that it's about the same amount as 3 of the largest you commonly see in shops. I'm wishing now that I'd measured it at the time. Isn't hindsight wonderful?

By the way, I measured my loaf tin by filling it with water from a cup measure, then I dumped the water in the bucket which I keep for the garden. To prepare the tin for baking, you can grease & line the tin, which is the old-fashioned way; or use a silicon pan as is, or line one with baking paper.

Zucchini muffins... oops!

The zucchini plant is doing well, so it must be time for a zucchini muffin recipe. This one that I googled up sounds pretty good. Here's the ingredient list.

* 3 cups grated fresh zucchini
* 2/3 cup melted unsalted butter
* 1 1/3 cup sugar
* 2 eggs, beaten
* 2 teaspoons vanilla
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* Pinch salt
* 3 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1 cup walnuts (optional)
* 1 cup raisins or dried cranberries (optional)


Look: 2/3 cup of butter, 1 & 1/3 cups sugar? Whoa! This is not your health food muffin. I decided to do it with only 1 cup of sugar, and different berries and nuts, but leave it otherwise untouched. Well, also self-raising flour, not that faffing about with baking soda. I used a cup of pecans, and a cup of dried raspberries that I found at Belco market. At $8 a punnet for the dried berries, and $4.50 for the pecans, this is also not your budget muffin.

By the way, for those new to US recipe style, 1 cup of butter is pretty close to a 250g packet. And they nearly always overdo the sugar. It took 4 medium zucchini to make the 3 cups. And although the original recipe says it makes more than 12, the author Elise must have small muffin pans. I got a nice even dozen.

So off I went on the routine. Mix dry stuff, mix wet stuff - including zucchini, it's very moist when grated. Combine, stuff into the silicone mini-brioche trays that I usually use for muffins. No, I have never made brioche. Then into the fan-forced oven at 175C for 20 minutes. Yes, my oven has been fixed! La la la... Ooh, look, Delicious magazine this month has a recipe for zucchini bread which is remarkably similar. How odd that they call it a savoury bread, when it has even more sugar than these muffins.

Wait, what? Oh Noes!!! This is the oops! I discovered the melted butter still sitting in the microwave. I accidentally baked them entirely without added fat. To my surprise, they are nevertheless quite edible, even when cold. The zucchini keeps them moist enough. I've added a thin smear of butter as I eat them, but it's still considerably less fat than in the recipe.

I find this especially amusing, because I was interviewed recently, and asked if I had any shameful kitchen secrets. No, really, I don't. I have grown up past apologising for my tastes. If I like pineapple on my pizza, or indeed anything unfashionable and daggy, that's my prerogative. De gustibus non est disputandum. And of course I sometimes make mistakes - don't we all? I'm not writing a fantasy blog here.

Now, what on earth am I going to do with 2/3 cup of melted & re-set butter??

More baking: carrots and onions

I've been slowly cleaning out the fridge and discovering things that need using up. Some very nice young carrots from the EPIC market had gone all limp and floppy. I also had some baby leeks and spring onions (the kind with the bulb) that were looking the worse for wear. And a couple of old tomatoes and half a punnet of large cherry tomatoes. These are easy things to deal with.

If you're a regular reader, you know that I roast tomatoes all the time. Cherry tomatoes work too. Since I'm basically reducing them to sauce, it doesn't matter that they take less time than the larger ones. Into the slow oven for an hour or so to caramelise a bit, peel when cool, and squish into a container for later use in a pasta or pizza sauce.

Floppy carrots will come good with iced water. You peel them and cut off the tops, and stick them in a container of cold water. Then it's into the fridge for an hour, or up to several days, even. They came so good that I ate several of them raw as a nice crunchy side to my sandwich lunch the other day. But I also saw a carrot muffin recipe in one of those cheapie supermarket food magazines and I felt inspired. I didn't have quite the required set of ingredients, so I improvised a bit. See below for the recipe.

As for the onions, well, as long as they're not too slimy you can just keep stripping off outer layers until you get to a nice core. I did this and chopped the resulting onion and leek mix fine. I fried them gently in a little mixed olive & canola oil until soft and a bit browned. Then I mixed them in to a beer bread mix, along with a teaspoon of caraway seeds and half a cup of coarsely grated strong cheddar. The beer was Cascade this time. We'll have it for dinner tonight, with some of that Carolina pork from the freezer, and a coleslaw.

I confess that I had to throw out some green beans and plums. They were definitely off. And some bread went moldy. In this weather, it really helps to keep it in the fridge. Mea culpa.


Recipe: Carrot and Honey Muffins
1 cup white SR flour
1 cup wholemeal SR flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp allspice
2 cups grated carrot
--
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup sunflower oil
1/2 cup plain yoghurt (low fat Greek)
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
--
Mix all dry ingredients thoroughly.
Mix all wet ingredients well.
Add wet mixture to dry mixture, stir gently to just combine.
Bake in muffin pans for 20 minutes at 200C, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Notes: Makes 6 large or 12 small.
Tip: honey is easier to measure if you microwave it for 20 seconds to runny. Using an oiled spoon helps, too.

These muffins came out surprisingly well. At first I thought I'd totally screwed up by burning them, and I'm still dubious about whether my oven is behaving itself on the non-fan setting. (Fan setting is still broken.) I made 6 large ones, baked them for 25 minutes before testing, and by then they were all a bit burned on the bottom and a couple a tad burned on top. (Oven is hotter at front than back.)

But it wasn't too bad - cut off the bottom and trim any burned bits, and they are good to go. They're even nicely moist; perhaps that's the yoghurt. They are good with cream cheese - it's almost like having carrot cake for breakfast.

Oh, and here's a bonus. My lunch, a tuna pasta salad. Using up the last of several salad veggies - and now I must go to the shop to restock.

Baking up a storm

Or a minor downpour, perhaps. I made brownies, and a lemon polenta cake for a work morning tea.

It was this lemon polenta cake from the BBC Good Food site. And these brownies from Chocolate & Zucchini. I read C&Z regularly, and it was a recent post just as I was contemplating what to make. And with all the lemons needing using from the tree down the side, a lemon cake seemed like a great alternate choice. I decided to try for a gluten-free variety, just in case any of my audience needed it.

I won't give recipes, because basically I just did what the recipes said. Instead, here are my notes on how it went.

For the lemon cake, I poured over a lemon juice based syrup rather than limoncello - it was for work, not a home dessert. Other than that, it was down the line following the recipe. It was pretty good, but I think it needs work. It came out nicely moist, but it was also quite fragile, tending to crumble easily. The polenta remained a little bit grittier than I'd like - I used an instant one, but still. And I felt the lemon flavour was not strong enough for my taste. More zest, or perhaps a bit of lemon oil should do it. My tree is, I believe, a Meyer lemon. They are relatively mild and sweet, so perhaps using the bitier shop lemons would improve it, too.

The brownies were absolutely fabulous. I used a mix of roasted almonds and macadamias for the nuts. The one issue I had with the recipe is that they are supposed to be done when the top goes shiny and cracks. But this didn't happen in the given time, nor in the two ten minute extensions I gave it. I called a halt there, as underdone has got to be better than dried out. I was a bit worried that I might have overdone them, but they came out fudgy, rich, and very strongly chocolatey. Nom. I do think that a slightly larger pan would have been good: they are pretty thick. Cut them very small to serve!