Pavlova.

Yesterday was mother's day, I made a pavlova.

I had to do the whole thing by hand with a tiny, partially broken whisk, but is was worth it - I love the way the slimy yellow-tinged egg whites gradually become thick, white and lustrous with only the addition of sugar and a bit of elbow grease (mmm, delicious).

I don't care what they say - size DOES matter. At least when it comes to whisks.

It took about 45 minutes but after I put on some banging choons and chatted to people coming in and out of the kitchen, I hardly noticed the work. Plus, it kinda sorta counts as some form of exercise right? Ok, maybe eating it totally negated the three calories I burnt making the thing but whatever.



The recipe is easy, it's just two ounces of sugar to each large egg white. Add a pinch of cornflour and a splash of vinegar (or lemon juice) and it becomes a pavlova. Bake in a low oven for around an hour and 20 minutes and leave to cool. Top with whipped cream and whatever fruit you have lying about - I used frozen raspberries.



I planned to make some sort of raspberry sauce with hints of lime and ginger, but unfortuently there was prosecco to be drunk and bubbly stuff gets me tipsy pretty quickly. This was evident when it came to decorating the thing - the cream and raspberries were dumped unceremoniously on top and I accidentally broke the base a little. Oops.

What happens when you drunkenly attempt to decorate a pavlova.

So taste wise how was it? Well, honestly, there's only so much you can say about it. Sweet meringue (shatteringly crisp outside, marshmallow soft inside), cool cream, sharp raspberries. Simple but pretty awesome.
But my favourite part of the whole thing was definitely getting lots of gratuitous shots of the silky gleaming mixture:

Oh, and yes, I did do the bowl-over-the-head test. I used my sister for that.

Mincemeat & frangipane tart.

I could make a thousand excuses as to why I haven't been blogging, but I won't. I don't really know why I've been neglecting this blog - I felt all tingly and happy when I entered in the name of today's post.
Anyway, a billion trillion apologies! Let's get onto the food.
This year (this year? Last year!) I made homemade mincemeat, which is the easiest recipe ever. You gather all your stuff, chuck it all into a massive bowl and mix. Sure, the ingredient list is kinda long, but the process is child's play.
I pretty much used Delia's recipe, changing the ratios and flavours wherever I felt like it. I also didn't bother heating it, but just packed it tightly into sterilised jars (dishwashed, dried in a low oven).
So basically, I had a buttload of mincemeat to use up that had been lurking in the cupboard for two months. Yes, I could have made mince pies but that's a pain in the ass! So a tart it was. Lazy as I am, I acknowledged the fact that one cannot make an entire tart out of dried fruits. This is where the frangipane came in - a soft, almost creamy layer to complement the flaky, crumbly pastry and fruit.

The pastry was a classic shortcrust (half fat to flour) bound only with a little water.


I didn't make enough pastry for the huuuuge case, and ended up having to do a major patch-up job on it. So it look pretty ugly unfortuently. No sugar was added since the filling is sweet enough. In terms of fat, I would advocate using half butter and half lard. Lard freaks people out for some reason, but it really gives the best results. You could use vegetable shortening at a push I guess.


This tart is best served warm with maybe a little cream poured on top if that's the way you roll.







For the pastry, combine 4oz of sifted plain flour with 2oz of salted butter and 2oz lard (both cubed and cold). Rub with fingertips until the texture resembles breadcrumbs.




Bind with as little water as possible.





Blind bake until very lightly golden.

Blind baking with (dried) kidney beans! Works just as well as ceramic baking beads, and the beans are totally reusable.



For the frangipane, clickety click.

Spread frangipane over the bottom of the tart case. Bake until firm to the touch, top with as much mincemeat as you desire and bake again until the mincemeat is slightly golden on top.





The tart was awesome, and I got a thumbs-up from Jamie!



Next time I may have the mincemeat as the bottom layer and the frangipane as the top - this would negate the need for a third baking.

My mincemeat and frangipane tart, if it were to enter a beauty contest, would get totally booed offstage. I'll think of a way to make it more presentable (individual tartlettes would certainly help) but for now, for the family, it's all good!

Stay tuned... please?

Bad news: I'm a douchebag with the attention span of a newt and can't keep this blog up.
Good news: I'm going home for the holidays which means a) I'll be doing a lot more cooking and b) I'll have access to my step-dad's awesome camera and will therefore be doing a few more posts.
First up, mince pies?

I know, I know, I'm a total weiner.

A delightful photograph of a lady, her pet, and a hotdog.
It's my little way of saying 'I'm sorry'.

No posts in three months??!
I don't even have the excuse of 'I've been busy!' because frankly, I haven't.
I'll try to be super-good and do a post on the party food for my 18th.
Stay tuned folks!
(And try to forgive me?)

In 11 days..

...I start training as a patisserie chef!
Well, technically I start training as a chef chef, but then I'll branch out into doing more desserts etc.

I'm looking forward to this - it's a little baby step towards my ultimate (and whimsical) dream of owning a very cool cafe with beautiful little cakes, a chocolate counter like they have in France, and proper pastries made with butter.

I don't really know what will happen to this blog.
Will I be too cooked out at the end of the day to even contemplate making a meal for one?
I really, really hope not.

Banana & pecan flapjacks.

Banana, pecan and blueberry flapjacks to be precise.
Although, I actually only added the blueberries because they had to be used up - the result wasn't disastrous, but it did distract you slightly from the harmonious pairing that is banana and pecan.
Still, flapjacks are flapjacks and everyone ate them with gusto regardless of any intruding berries.

I've only made these twice, and both times I made them by melting sugar and butter together in a pot, adding the squished bananas and pecans, and stirring in the oats with a good pinch of salt. This is imperative, becaause otherwise they would be too cloying and sweet. A quick taste and a prod and you'll know whether it needs more of anything. Then bung it in the oven until it's golden brown. Great for breakfast, packed lunches (they're back in fashion now, right? Recession chic and all that) or to have with a cup of tea in the afternoon if you are so inclined.

The lure of the flapjack is that you feel as if you are eating something very healthy indeed. It seems rather angelic on the surface - lovely nutritious and invigorating oats, fruit and nuts. The food equivalent of taking a bracing walk through the countryside. The food equivalent of a guy with a beard wearing a colourful knitted jumper. Of course, the only reason that they're so moreish is not because of the health benefits, but more to do with all that delicious sugar and butter. Hurrah!

Tip of the day!

Store nuts in the freezer.
They stay a lot fresher for a lot longer than if they were in the cupboard, and you don't even have to defrost them.

Blackurrants.

Apparently we have blackcurrant bushes in the garden.
I wasn't aware of this fact until my brother and sister proudly brandished a large bowl of the things in my face this morning.
Despite my obviously marvellous and astounding talent of being able to eat a lime like an orange, I find blackurrants too sour, so whatever we decided to make with the haul, it had to involve copious amounts of sugar. (And so it did! A whole kilogram, in fact.)

After one initial boiling with just a bit of water, we strained them to remove all the skins and tiny stalks and possibly insects. The thicker stuff that came out was mixed with sugar and combined with cream to make a delightful fool.



The rest was boiled again with sugar and a few pieces of ginger. Whilst skimming, I took the time to enjoy the pyschadelic swirls of colour in the pot.

Okay, so it doesn't look too impressive, but trust me, it was.
Kind of. I'm clearly very easily amused.
Anyway, after the syrup was boiled I squeezed in one lime to make a blackurrant, ginger and lime cordial. It's scarily addictive in its un-watered down form - tart and sweet, slightly hot and tantalising from the ginger, and fragrant with lime. I needed a bigger lime hit however, so I trickled some cordial into the squeezed out lime and sucked it all back out. I love lime, did you know that? My teeth were squeaky and my stomach hurt after repeating this process many times, but it was worth it.


I think I also might have invented my own cocktail. This cordial + gin + tonic water = a good drink? I know nothing about cocktails, but the family seemed appreciative. (The kiddies, of course, got an alcohol free version.) Can I ™ that? I'm going to ™ that.

That's the non-alcoholic version. It was pretty cool the way this foamed right over the top of the glass, and it does make a beautiful - and entirely natural - colour. The parents christened this a Bloody Sophie, which they found hilarious. I most certainly did not, and would love and suggestions for an alternate name before that one sticks..

The last blackurrant related item were some cupcakes with blackcurranty icing. My sister is having a sleepover as I type and apparently children these days require sugary treats at ridiculous hours of the night. We ran out of cupcake cases, so I hedged my bets with some petits fours cases - adorable, but labour intensive. What would have been 12 normal cakes turned into roughly 45 mini ones.

Icing them was not fun, let me tell you. Here is a 10-year-old brother's hand to illustrate the size:

Cute, but annoying.

Bread.

Back from Turkey, sporting some ludicrous tan lines. The worst came from the fact that I was constantly wearing leggings (don't ask), so my legs are ridiculously pale and my feet are beautifully bronzed. How are your holidays coming along?

A while back I had mentioned that I hadn't baked a loaf of bread in all my seventeen years. This fact was unbearable to me so I decided to start making my own bread immediately.

Wanting to take things easy for the first couple of attempts, I decided on a no-knead recipe (the laptop is broken so I've lost the link but I'll try and track it down somehow). Suffice to say, I'm utterly hooked. There is now a permanent, on-going bowl of dough in the fridge just begging to be baked at any given moment. Basically, you chuck together a basic dough (something along the lines of 6 cups of flour, 3 cups of water, 3 tsps of yeast and 3tsps of salt, but don't hold me to it), leave it to rise, then stick it in the fridge for up to a week until you fancy bunging it in the oven. The bread itself is very airy and chewy, with a lovely dark crust. When it gets a bit stale after a few days - if it lasts that long - it makes brilliant toast.

Since there's no kneading involved, the dough is very wet and incredibly hard to handle. Eventually though, after much wrestling with a ball of gloop that loves adhering to your fingers, you will manage to get it onto the tray. I dust mine with flour or semolina usually, but always find that I have to chisel and prise the finished product off the metal. Therefore, I find baking parchment to be the best option.

One day I was feeling particularly energetic so decided to do a bit of kneading. Same formulation, very different dough. Much easier to handle, and of course the baked loaf was different in texture - softer and with less big air bubbles in it.




There were also some experiments with a brown loaf.



And, everyone's favourite, an olive and chilli bread. This particular loaf was gone by the time I woke up the next morning.


Bread machines: Just Say No!

See you in a week!

I feel bad about not posting recently.
My laptop broke and I've been using - or not, as it seems - the big communal desktop.
Then I realised that I was going on holiday today (had no idea!) so I obviously can't go ahead with a new one right now. But I promisepromisePROMISE I'll come back with something about homemade pasta (hint: never again).
Hope you all have amazing summery adventures.
x