Baking - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: Baking

18
Dec
2018

Semolina, Coconut and Marmalade Cake

categories: Cake

I’ve been reflecting on the comment I made in the post on the Stuffed Monkey about how I don’t like the taste of orange peel and, to be honest, I feel it made me sound like a big baby. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I actually don’t like the taste of dried orange peel but….and it’s a big but…(not a big butt, I’m no Sir Mix A Lot) I thought that in the general spirit of pushing myself out of my comfort zone that is this blog, I should try things before dismissing them. And my last recollection of dried orange peel comes from Hot Cross Buns from back in the days when I was kissing tv screens. Which is all a very long way of saying that I made Yotam Ottolenghi’s Semolina, Coconut and Marmalade Cake.

And it was delicious.

Who knew marmalade was actually quite nice? I bought one that was full of peel too! They don’t call me a dare devil for nothing! Yes, you’ll lfind me and my newly found tolerance for slightly bitter jam living right over there on the edge!

The recipe for this cake came from Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Jerusalem. The recipe can be found here:

Semolina, Coconut and Marmalade Cake

I should mention here that this is a syrup cake. Which means that once the cake is baked you add some sort of syrup to it. In this case it is an orange blossom water flavoured syrup. HHowever,one thing that was very different in this cakes to other syrup cakes I have made is the technique off applying the syrup. In previous recipes that I have made you usually stab the cake all over with a skewer and pour the syrup over. In the Ottolenghi version you kind of paint the syrup into the cake.

This seemed daunting at first. There was a lot of syrup. And initially ,I thought it was going to take forever. And you know, I have things to do! In the end ,the slow painting of syrup onto cake became quite meditative.

This is a good cake to make if you need time to ponder an issue…like does God exist? Should I buy those shoes? And what exactly is semolina anyway?

So, fear of marmalade conquered. I have a bit left in the jar, maybe in the not too distant future, I will tackle my dislike of bourbon enough to make these babies!

Bourbon and Marmalade Glazed Drumsticks

Although, come to think of it, I’m not that fond of drumsticks either.

In the meantime though, I feel like I have earned the title Lady Marmalade. Except that song was about a hooker so I may have to rethink that title!

Have a great week!

28
Nov
2018

Beetle Pie

categories: Pie

Beetle Pie? WTF is going on at RFFMT? Is this the month of disgusting sounding food? Well, maybe…but I also just got sent a copy of The Nightmare Before Dinner: Recipes to Die For: The Beetle House Cookbook by Zach Neil and couldn’t wait a year for Hallowe’en to share a recipe with you.

And as with last week’s Stuffed Monkey, the yumminess of the Beetle Pie is directly proportional to the yechhhh factor of its name. That is to say….it’s totally delicious. Let me convince you by unpacking it into its component parts:

Chocolate wafer crust
Pistachio custard filling
Blackberry jam topping
Whipped cream and fresh blackberries to garnish

Yeah, baby!

There are so many things to talk about this week. I really want to tell you about the book that contained the Beetle Pie recipe but that will have to wait. Because while researching this post I came across an absolutely bonkers tale from history involving a very different type of beetle pie.

So buckle in….because we are taking a trip in the way back machine all the way to 1863.

1863 was a huge year in history. In America, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. The Red Cross was founded in Switzerland. And, in London, the first tube train ran between Paddington and Farringdon. And some five miles away from Paddington, in Brixton, Mrs Elizabeth Wilton baked a pie for her neighbour’s coachman, Edward Gardiner.

The relationship between these neighbours was…..strained. Mrs Wilton liked to have German bands (and Negro singers) playing loud music in her house a few times a week. This was not appreciated by the neighbourhood in general and her sickly, elderly neighbour specifically. Words were exchanged. And sometimes more than words. On one occasion, Mrs Wilton was seen throwing bricks at the neighbour’s windows! She was feisty!

She was also batshit crazy! One day, she baked the German band a pie. They took it to the local pub to eat. However, the pie was not filled with apples or rhubarb or cherries. Or anything normal. Because this was a pie baked by Elizabeth Wilton who was as mad as a box of frogs.

The pie filling was a pair of ladies knickers!

Not to be outdone, one of the band members then donned the knickers, returned to Mrs Wilton’s house and danced in front of her door for a while.

I imagine that dance looking a little like this:

Loud music? Brick throwing? Underwear pies? Revenge door dancing? It’s 1863 people! Calm the hell down and go catch one of those newfangled tube trains. We won’t be needing your kind of mad arse white trashery until we invent reality tv in about 120 years!

But all this is merely to set the context under which the hapless Edward Gardiner received his pie.

Now, I don’t pretend to know anything about the life of coachmen in 1863 but from what happened next, I’m guessing it was hungry work. Or maybe, they didn’t get paid a lot so hunger was par for the course. Or maybe Edward Gardiner was just not too quick on the uptake. Because despite the lingerie pie precedent, it took him a good “six or seven mouthfuls” of Mr’s Wilton’s pie before he realised that

It tasted revolting
It was filled with black beetles and,
“A nasty stuff resembling mustard, but it was not mustard.”

The “nasty stuff” was later discovered to be gamboge, a yellow tree sap used as a laxative.

Not So Fast Eddie eventually took what was left of the pie to the local police station. Where the sergeant claimed to have never seen “anything more filthy or disgusting” and that he had to open all the police station windows to get rid of the “intolerable stench”.

Let me just repeat. The sergeant took one whiff. Eddie G? Six (or seven) mouthfuls…

The next day, Mrs Wilton turned up at the police station bearing…..yep…you guessed it. A freshly baked pie!

Which upon examination was found to contain a painted toy pear.

Which was found to be full of black beetles!

Later, in court, Mrs Wilton admitted having made the original beetle pie “as a lark”.

The judge agreed that it was a practical joke and not meant to cause injury and she was released from custody.

A few months later the irrepressible Mrs Wilton was back in the police station. This time she was charged with knocking off a policeman’s hat whilst being drunk in public.

I love this woman!!!!!😍😍😍

There is no record of whether she baked the charging officer one of her very special pies!

I hope you loved the story of the utterly eccentric Elizabeth Wilton and her black beetle pies as much as I did!

I found the entire story on The Skittish Library. It’s a fabulous site, why not pop over and see what other delights Estelle has to offer!

And make a beetle pie in celebration of Elizabeth Wilton and her pie making badassery from 1863!

Have a great week!

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11
Jun
2018

The Crown Princess Victoria’s Birthday Cake

categories: Birthday Cake, Cake, Gluten Free, Meringue

Can you believe I’ve been doing this for 6 years? Who knew this was going to last longer than most proper jobs, many romantic relationships and a large percentage of prison sentences!

This is a belated celebration though because I’m having a horrendous month. First I hurt my back and was out of action for a couple of weeks. And now I have an awful cold.

But better late than never! And if we were going to wait for anything? This might be the one!

This is the Crown Princess Victoria’s birthday cake!

Time sure flies when you decide to follow your own brand of weirdness!

But let’s talk about this cake. Because it’s not quite cake as we know it. I also need to confess that I have no idea where this recipe came from. I copied it out of a book but totally forgot to note the book from whence it came. So, if anyone knows, please drop me a line so I can attribute it properly!

It’s also gluten-free for those of you who care about those sorts of things!

First up you need to start with two layers of nutty biscuit base. The original recipe said walnut but I had almond meal in the house so rather than grinding walnuts into meal, I took the lazy girl’s option and used what I had. (In my defence I also had a bad back at the time. 😉 ).

And haters look out, I also thought it would work better with an almond base seeing as I was going to decorate it with marzipan. It was going to be a double almond delight!

Next up a meringue!

Then meringue was sandwiched with whipped cream between the two almond discs. This is where it got a little crazy because the meringue was round on the top and the discs were not. So the sandwiching was a little rough…

The the “cake” was “iced” with more whipped cream and decorated with fresh raspberries and some marzipan roses!

This looked so pretty and was absolutely delicious. The crisp biscuit, the crunchy outside of the meringue and the marshmallowy inside made for a lovely blend of textures. The raspberries added a cake much-needed tang into the overall sweetness of the cake and whipped cream just makes anything a party!

Here’s the recipe:

The Crown Princess Victoria’s Birthday Cake

Print Recipe

A different and delicious “cake” to celebrate any occasion.

Author: Taryn Fryer

Ingredients

Scale

For The Biscuit Layers

1 1/4 cups almond meal
1/4 cup icing sugar
2 egg whites

For The Meringue Layer

2 egg whites
1/2 cup caster sugar

To Decorate

1 1/2 cups whipped cream
250g fresh raspberries
Fondant or marzipan roses

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

For the Bicuit Layers

Mix together the almond meal, icing sugar and the unbeaten egg whites.Spread out into 2 x 20cm rounds on baking paper on baking trays.
Bake in a moderate oven for 10 minutes until firm to touch.
Turn out onto wire racks and carefully peel off the paper.
Cool.

For The Meringue

Beat the 2 eggs whites until stiff.
Add the sugar gradually, beating all the time until glossy and thick.
Spread out to a 20cm round on baking paper on a baking tray.
Bake in a slow oven until dry and crisp – around 45-50 minutes.
Cool and carefully remove paper.

To Decorate

Sandwich the meringue between the two biscuit layers with whipped cream.
Cover the top and sides with whipped cream.
Decorate with raspberries and fondant or marzipan roses.

You can find an article on how to make proper marzipan roses here. Or you can muddle through and hope for the best like I did with mine!

And of course, I couldn’t let the moment go by without reference to this!

Have a wonderful week everyone!

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20
Nov
2017

Smore’s Brownies & Sweet Revenge Book Review

categories: Baking, Books, Brownies

The old saying tells us that revenge is a dish best served cold. A new baking book will also have you believing that revenge is a dish best served sweet. Sweet Revenge: Passive-Aggressive Desserts for Your Exes & Enemies by Heather Kim, due to be released in January 2018 is a super fun read and contains over 50 sweet treats to help you weather the storm when life gets tough.

Because you know what? Sometimes when a girl has had gee, I dunno, a week of totally mixed messages and is feeling hurt betrayed and just downright shitty, she just needs a little something something to get her through the day. And by something something I mean ~~a shit ton of booze~~ cake. Or pudding. Or some totally amazing S’mores brownies aka…

Those of you who are regular readers will know that I adore a pun so the names of the recipes in this book were pure gold for me.

In additions to the Everyday I Regret You S’more Brownies you can also find:

Shut Your Stupid Cake Hole – a coconut mochi cake with sesame coconut pecan icing
Stop Texting Me You Crepe – a crepe cake with Oreos
You’re A Piece of Sheet Cake – a cinco leches cake with malted milk whipped cream and salted dulce de leche drizzle (OMG…yes!!!!!)
Go Fudge Yourself – Macinac Island chocolate fudge with white chocolate candied ramen
I Ain’t Puddin’ Up With You – Butterscotch puddin’ pots with chocolate sauce

I was beside myself with joy at some of these. Truly. And not just for the names. I mean cinco leches cake with malted milk whipped cream and salted dulce de leche drizzle sounds like heaven. Who even knew there were that many leches? But now I want all cinco of them baked in a cake. With a dulce de leche drizzle…

As for the S’mores Brownies, let’s start with the base which a dark, glossy, fudgy brownie which was ridiculously easy to make.

Kim provides the recipe for home-made marshmallows to top this. Being lazy, and in a hurry, I chose to buy some marshmallows. Which all went wonderfully until….2 pink marshmallows short!!!!!

If you put these on the Brownies whilst they are still warm, they melt a little and fill some of the gaps between…sadly, not all of them!

Never mind, because we are about to cover it all with a Graham Cracker Streusel. And sprinkles! And then, you get to blowtorch the hell out of it all. Which is another great way to get out some frustration!

Sweet Revenge not only has some great recipes like the ones above but also handy tips, gorgeous photos and cute drawings. The downside of Sweet Revenge was that some of the flavour combinations were a little too out there for me vis a vis:

Carrot Cake truffles with Cool Ranch Doritos Sugar
Strawberry biscuits with chicken skin candy
Pound cake with Sriracha icing.
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Ice Cream Sandwiches with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Ganache

But you know what? There are always going to be recipes that I don’t fancy in any book. And it might be better to be edgy than boring! And I know I am making a judgement on a sample size of one but this seems like a pretty solid book – the brownies were amazing!

Here’s the recipe. This is straight from the book so you can get a feel for the style:

Here are some wise words from Heather on why you should bake for your enemies and exes:

And more wise words on revenge from Old Blue Eyes himself…

Get out there and be successful! And bake these brownies!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Capstone / Switch Press for the ARC.

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05
Oct
2017

Profiteroles For Very Special Occasions

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, A-Zof Cooking, Desserts, France, Pastry

You might think that five and a bit years into this that I would cease to be surprised. Both when things go awry and when by some stroke of mad luck things work out just as they should. Such was the case with the Profiteroles I made on the weekend from the Very Special Occasions Chapter of The A- Z of Cooking (1977). When the profiteroles came out of the oven looking like, well, profiteroles, there were whoops of joy, squeals of excitement and a bit of spontaneous kitchen dancing!

Yep, in this house, this:

Equals This:

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. First. Hello V. And whilst we’re on the subject let’s’ all note the name of the chapter. Not just Special Occasions. Very Special Occasions. Requiring very special dancing apparently. And also requiring several goes at making something that was worthy of posting. After all, it’s a very special occasion.

First up there was a go at Carpetbag Steak. Now, if you lookup Carpetbag Steak anywhere on the interwebs, you will more than likely read that it is a famous Australian recipe. I’ve lived here virtually all my life and I have never head of it. However, I really liked the idea of steak and oysters. I made the recipe and it looked and tasted meh.

Then I made a Beef Stroganoff. Tasted good. Looked terrible in all the photos. I think it’s that thing that Jenny from Silver Screen Suppers told me about where brown food just doesn’t photo well. This was about the best…

So then I made Carpetbag Steak v2. A modern recipe this time. Still looked and tasted meh.

I was left with a choice. Champagne and Orange Juice. Or Profiteroles. And believe me . You came so close to having Champagne and Orange juice as your very special occasion meal. Because this is what happens inside my head whenever pastry is mentioned:

The profiteroles only happened because the very special occasion was a long weekend due to the Football Grand Final being the next day. I know right. Who has a holiday BEFORE the big day?

“It’s the dumbest reason for a holiday ever” I said.

“Come to work then” said my boss.

“It’s the best holiday ever. Better even than Jesus being born. Or dying.”

So anyway, on the holiday for best/ worst reason ever I got a little bored in the evening and thought that I would have a flick through The A-Z of Cooking, to plan V-Z. The profiterole recipe caught my eye and I realised that I had every ingredient. And a whole heap of bravado due to being about 3/4 of a bottle of a wine in.

Don’t judge. That produced these. Light as air, melt in the mouth, boozy cream filled and shiny chocolately pastry balls of deliciousness,

The basis for profiteroles, and the reason for my hissy fit is pastry. Choux pastry to be exact. I have made choux pastry exactly once before. For a recipe called Cherry Fritters from The A-Z of Cooking. Don’t bother searching the archives for them. They were a total disaster and I didn’t post them.

But choux starts with a roux…actually no. According to The A-Z of Cooking choux pastry starts with 63g of flour. Yep. 63. Not 60. Not 65. 63. And seeing as this was a very special occasion, 63g of flour it was.

This became this:

Which became these. I couldn’t find a piping bag and my piping skills are non-existent so I just blobbed spoonfuls of the pastry onto the tray. Also, I wasn’t really expecting this to work. And need I remind you about that bottle of wine that was now 5/6’s gone?

Well, slap my arse and call me Charlie if those funny looking blobs didn’t turn into these. They’re shall we say “rustic” but on a scale of one to ten of being recognizable as profiteroles, they have to be at least an eight.

So then fill and ice and sprinkle and you get these: (even more profiteroley).

Here’s the recipe direct from The A-Z of Cooking:

I tweaked the recipe by swapping out the rum for Amaretto and adding some sprinkles.

Make, eat, enjoy, do a little dance of sheer pleasure.

And have a great week!

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