New Baking Method?

You will have seen the previous post with the picture of my chocolate cake disaster. I said I would explain, so here goes.
A friend at work was leaving to have a baby and I had promised to make a cake for her farewell tea (we have tea and cake at work quite a bit, lots of birthdays etc) and what with it being the Christmas season I didn't have any time to bake except before going to work. So up I get at 6.30 and began the baking. I had decided to make Nigella's Quadruple Chocolate loaf (quadruple because it has cocoa and chocolate in the cake, a chocolate syrup poured over the top and chocolate shavings to finish! So a bit of chocolate is involved). I won't give you the recipe this time, I will wait until I make it properly!
All seemed to go well, batter made, tin lined (with my loaf liners), oven pre-heated, all normal. I popped it in the oven and then went to have my shower. I came downstairs about 30 minutes later and it smelled like the cake was burning, but it couldn't be it had only been in the oven for 30 minutes of it's hour. So what was happening? I opened the oven to discover that the mix had risen over the top of the tin and some had burned on the bottom of the oven, mystery solved. As I had the oven open I decided to turn it around at which point I discovered that the top of the cake was burned black. Rather than rising as a cake usually does it was completely flat and black! And not cooked inside, liquid inside really. I was flumoxed as you can imagine. I poked it a few times, wondered what I had done and after about 5 minutes of non-plussedness I decided it wasn't fit for human consumption. I then poured the syrup away, washed up and went to work wondering all the while what I had done wrong.
When I got to work I was explaining what had happened to a friend at work and she asked if I had put the grill on instead of the oven! And suddenly it all was clear, I had grilled my chocolate cake!!
I told the potential recipient of the cake my sad and sorry tale and she was very understanding and even moved by the fact that I had tried at least! We had Maison Blanc chocolate logs and lemon tarts instead and some yum home-made cupcakes, so no lack of cake.
When I got home that night the grilled cake was waiting for me, I had a taste and let me tell you it was good, but I binned it. I could have eaten it all but that way lies madness and an even bigger waistline. But I will make it again. But next time I will make sure I don't bake at 6.30 in the morning!!

Chocolate Cake Disaster

Just adding a picture of a cake disaster that happened this morning, feast your eyes and I will explain later!

Christmas Baking: The Cake (Part 2)

And so armed with my Merchant Gourmet chestnut puree I was ready to make the cake. As I said before it is from Feast and is the "Easy-Action Christmas Cake". Not your serious-soak-the-fruit-overnight-"real" Christmas cake but your easy-throw-everything-in-together Christmas cake. My kind of cake!
There is some soaking of the fruit, you put all the fruit, butter, sugar, chestnut puree, rum and orange juice and zests in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer it for 10 minutes and then leave it for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes I can cope with, otherwise you have to think ahead and prepare! Very bad when you think I'm trying to be all traditional and make my cake in advance but you know it works just as well this way so why tinker.
Once the soaking has finished you then add all the rest of the ingredients (eggs, flour and spices) mix well and pour into you prepared tin. The prepared tin means a double layer of greaseproof paper and then another double layer on the outside of the tin (double the height of the tin) to protect the cake during the long bake. Then it's into the oven (150 C) for one and three quarter hours to two hours. I managed to stop myself from opening the oven door the whole time and after and hour and three quarters it was done, risen and cracked on the surface all rich and fruity and smelling of Christmas.
The final thing to do was to douse it in more Rum! Then leave it in the tin until it is completely cooled, wrap and store. I just had a quick look at it now (really to take a photo for you guys) and it looks great and smells yum. I also took the opportunity to give it a little more Rum, well it is Christmas after all!

Christmas Baking Continues: The Cake (part 1)

It was puddings a couple of weeks ago and last week it was time for the cake. In fact it was supposed to have been the previous week but Tesco (again) conspired against me. The recipe I used is from Feast by Nigella, I used it last year to great success and so decided that it would be the one this year too. It calls for pureed chestnut, seems reasonable doesn't it? Not beyond the ken of man? So you would think.
Armed with my ingredients list we went to Tesco Extra (note the Extra, promising me, well extra) at Surrey Quays again. I should have known better after my last trip but I'm an optimist at heart and the boyfriend needed to go there so... I didn't need to get much so we grabbed a basket and, dodging the multitudes who were all out again, we picked up the various ingredients. Then it came to the pureed chestnut and we went to all the aisles that it could/should have been in but no luck so I asked someone. It so happened that another woman had asked about the same thing (I did wonder if she was making Nigella's cake too, but didn't ask) and the gentleman had searched the spices aisle with no luck and sent us to the Christmas aisle. Off we went to be confronted with all manner of Christmas food, cakes, puddings, santas and other chocolate shaped Christmas objet. As you will have guessed, no pureed chestnut. One more turn of the likely aisles and we gave up. As I wanted to do the cake that day the boyfriend offered to take me to Sainsbury's in New Cross Gate (my local) and after checking that he really meant it (well, you have to show willing!) off we went. And, guess what? Loads of the stuff, tins of it, down be the head with it we were. Yes they had it. Not sure what this means about the difference between Sainsbury's shoppers and Tesco shoppers but I'll not be looking for anything out of the ordinary at Tesco for a while.
By this time I had lost my Christmas cake baking will so decided to leave it until the next week and so we get to last Saturday.

Pumpkin Pie a la Gayle Hunnicutt

As it was bonfire night last night (and I was having friends over) I decided to continue my Halloween baking theme and make a Pumpkin Pie. I know this is American and usually made for Thanksgiving but what the hey.
A friend mentioned that she had a recipe that her and her mother had been using for years so I decided that it was best to use something that was tried and tested. When I got the recipe it turned out to be Gayle Hunnicutt's Pumpkin Pie. The name was familiar so I checked her out online and it turns out she was an American actress who had a brief Hollywood career then married David Hemmings and moved to London. Not sure what her qualification are for making Pumpkin Pie! But I digress.
The recipe calls for a 12inch pastry tin and a pastry case to go in it. So I made some shortcrust pastry (from Gary Rhodes) and blind baked it in readiness.

Ingredients:
1 medium Pumpkin (I used my Libbys pureed Pumpkin rather than roasting and pureeing the Pumpkin as the recipe calls for, much easier. I used a 425g tin)
4oz caster sugar
2oz light soft brown sugar
half tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
half tsp ginger
quarter tsp nutmeg or allspice (I used nutmeg)
zest of an orange and a lemon
one eight tsp ground cloves (seems a bit pointless so I left it out)
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp Molasses (I had treacle so used that)
300g soured cream (it really said 2x5oz cartons of soured cream but I converted it to make it easier)
2 and a half oz cream cheese
Basically this is a "put everything in a bowl and mix recipe", very easy. So I did just that and put the mixture in the pastry case and put in the oven (170C) and started to clear up. As I did this I noticed the two eggs that were supposed to in the mixture! As it had only been in the oven for a few minutes I whipped it out and scraped the mixture back into the bowl and added the eggs. Disaster averted. Back in the oven it went for about 40 minutes (it's ready when a knife comes out clean).
Sometimes I'm just a bit of a klutz, I think I'm reading the recipe thoroughly but then I miss something, it happens a bit too often! But it never seems to make much difference, the cakes seem to turn out (most of the time). And now, writing up the recipe here I've discovered that I forgot to add the caster sugar! You see, klutz.
I served it with cream and pretty much all the plates were cleared, no one said "you know what this is missing? caster sugar". I have to say it wasn't my favourite dessert in the world, not sure I will make it again but not sure that the missing caster sugar was the culprit. It might have made it a bit sweeter but it wasn't the sweetness I didn't like, not sure I can put my finger on it. So, note to self, read the recipe through a few times and maybe check off the ingredients as you go along!

Halloween Baking

I love when a new season starts and a whole new array of food is available to cook. Being a baker there are lots of cakes that you make for a particular occasion and a lot of these fit in with seasonal food. And so we have Halloween, ghosts and ghouls, fancy dress party's and pumpkins. Not only do you have the delights of pumpkin and/or squash in a savoury way there are also lots of cakes to be made.
Last year I bought some of the tinned pumpkin that is used in the US to make the traditional thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie. I figured that Whole Foods would stock it and I was right, they had a whole wall made out of Libbys Pumpkin. I had just bought the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook and they had a recipe for Pumpkin cupcakes. I made them and brought them into work and we had a lovely Halloween afternoon tea. So I decided that I had started a tradition and that I should do something again this year (any excuse!).
After another trip to Whole Foods (the High Street Ken one is a nice walk through the park away from work) I looked to the Google machine for inspiration. I fancied doing a loaf, mostly because it is easier to transport but also because they are usually very easy. I found a recipe for a Pumpkin, Lemon and Poppy Seed loaf and decided that was the one. This recipe called for roasting pumpkin and then pureeing it but I was way ahead with my Libbys. It was very easy, the most fiddly thing was processing the flour and butter to make a fine crumb but it was hardly hard work!
Now the other reason I wanted to do a loaf based cake was that I had bought some greaseproof paper lining cases for a loaf tin last week in John Lewis. I have seen these in various places in the last few years but never bought any and thought I would give them a try. Let me tell you I will be going back for the other versions because these are genius. No more greasing and lining you tin, all you do is plonk this in the tin, fill with cake mixture, bake and remove. And the cakes look shop bought! Why haven't I been using these for the last few years! Madness. I duly lined my tin and filled with cake mix (ok, the first attempt went a bit wrong, liner collapse, say no more) and it was so easy to remove, love these. The cakes looked great and smelled of nutmeg and mixed spice, autumn in your kitchen.
I decided I would make a frosting for one and leave the other as Delicious magazine intended. I used cream cheese and icing sugar with a bit of lemon zest (1oz cream cheese to 6oz icing sugar, a helpful recipe from a friend) and transported it to work with the cakes and iced it just before serving. They went down well and there was some leftover for breakfast the next day! Sorry, no photo this time, I forgot. You will have to take my word for it that they looked damned fine.

Christmas Puddings (Part 2)

Sorry to keep you waiting for the end of the pudding story, I know that you have been on tenter hooks, did she or didn't she? And just in case you can't last to the end of the post, it has a happy ending!
As you know I used my mother's recipe, she sent it to me a couple of years ago, handwritten on some lovely notepaper, notepaper that only a mother of a certain age would own! But stationery apart it works. It's all in ounces and I'm very bad at converting to the gram and when I was buying the ingredients I over-bought on everything! But it means that I have enough dried fruit for my Christmas cake.
Ingeredients: (I'm going to give it to you as my mother wrote it)
6oz Flour
8oz White Breadcrumbs
12oz Brown Sugar
1 lb Currants
8oz Raisins
8oz Sultanas
4oz Cherries (glace)
4oz Mixed Peel
Zest of 1 Lemon
Zest of 1 Orange
8oz Margarine or Butter (I used butter)
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons Brandy or Whiskey
half a pint Guinness
1 teaspoon Mixed Spice
half a teaspoon ground Cinnamon
half a teaspoon ground Nutmeg
These ingredients are enough to make two 2 pint puddings (I bought 2 plastic bowls in John Lewis for £3 each), grease the two bowls and make sure you have greaseproof paper and tin foil for the top.
Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl (all the fruit and breadcrumbs). I managed to get all the dry ingredients in the bowl and was about to add the flour when I realised that I didn't have the breadcrumbs. I was making these at the boyfriends house and he doesn't possess a food processor or a billy whizz (you know that hand held processor?) so I had to use his liquidiser. It works but it's not ideal.
Sieve the flour and the spices in another bowl and add your dry ingredients and mix well. Melt the margarine/butter and leave to cool before adding to the mixture with the beaten eggs and whiskey/brandy. I used whiskey, one from the whiskey society called "Banana Split in a Sauna", I kid you not! My mother put a PS at the bottom of the method "you may not want to put in all the Guinness, you will know if it's wet enough". So leave the Guinness to the end, I used almost all the half pint. My mother was right I did know when it was wet enough.
Now the most important part of making Christmas puddings, the making of the wish. When we were growing up my mother would get us all to stir the mixture and make a wish. I can't remember if the wishes came true but I remember always making sure that I got to make it.
So wishes made fill you pudding bowls and cover with greaseproof paper and tin foil, making a fold in the middle to leave room for air to get in when steaming. My mother always tied twine (you might know it as string) around the bowls making a little handle so that it's easy to get them out of the saucepan. I then steamed them for 6 hours, which just seems like forever. At 8pm on Sunday night they came out and they smelled good, they smelled of Christmas. There are instructions in the recipe for cooking the pudding before serving but you will have to wait until December 25th to hear the end of this story.