mirrormirror

Easy Cake Decorating Idea

 

I’m starting to think that Pinterest has pushed back the cause of feminism by several hundred years.

 

 

 

This weekend we were hosting a Eurovision party and since it also happened to be the birthday of one of the Minx’s friends who was attending, I offered to make a quick birthday cake.

And then I went on Pinterest, disappeared down the rabbit hole, and emerged to find several hours had gone by and the kitchen was totally covered with food colouring and buttercream.  This is indeed a very easy frosting idea, but quick it is most certainly not.  It was enormous fun to do though.

 

 

The Minx and I got a little carried away with the food colouring and made coloured layers inside the cake, which I think in hindsight was a garishness too far, particularly as they were not quite as subtly pretty as I was hoping  It would have looked better just as plain cake with white buttercream inside.

But then garishness isn’t really a problem when making cake for an eight year old. Please excuse drunken pic below, but you get the idea.

 

Food Photography Workshop with Andrew Scrivani

 

At the weekend I popped down to San Francisco for the day.  It was meant to be longer, but then it worked out that the Minx’s end-of-year performance was on Saturday afternoon and of course I couldn’t miss that.

But I also couldn’t miss a food photography workshop held by New York Times food photographer, Andrew Scrivani hosted by the wonderful Contigo, a Spanish restaurant in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighbourhood.

 

 

Andrew is the master of a more painterly approach to food photography – he focuses on perfect lighting, simple propping and graphic styling to make the food seem to leap from the page and which makes you the viewer wish it would leap straight into your mouth.  Truly it’s food porn at its most succulently droolworthy.  Luxuriate in his portfolio here and you will see exactly what I mean.

I met Andrew before when he came and gave short workshop in Seattle (which for some reason I forgot to blog) and I was really excited to see and hear him again.  Andrew used to teach before becoming a food photographer, and you can tell.  He’s infinitely patient and very good at explaining what he does.  He went through a greatest hits slide show in the morning, explaining in great detail how he manages to achieve his shots (and imparting a whole load of new knowledge that I hadn’t picked up during the first workshop).  Then we had lunch featuring the most incredible paella known to man, followed by an hour or two to play, with props and food provided by the restaurant.  For the last part of the day Andrew critiqued our work, which was scary – I never want anyone to see my outtakes, let alone a professional food photographer, but obviously incredibly useful. And it was almost more fascinating and inspiring to see what other photographers were able to achieve with the same lighting, food, props and equipment, just by looking at things differently.

We learned that sometimes it’s good to go in close.

 

 

And sometimes we should look for shapes and colour.

 

 

Drips and oozes are always good.

 

 

Or else you could just focus on tiny details.

 

 

Flares and reflections on bottles add shape and interest.

 

 

And sometimes food is just too darn ugly, however much you try and brighten it up with props and garnishes and bright sunlight.

 

 

Make sure your board is clean and free of grease stains and salt (now you tell me).

 

 

And sometimes harsh backlighting is your friend.

 

 

When in doubt about which picture to choose try a diptych (and yes I fell in love with a pot of pink curing salt).

 

A little bird tells me that Andrew will be giving a workshop in Seattle in June.  Details have not yet been published but follow him on Twitter @andrewscrivani or on his blog Making Sunday Sauce for news.  You won’t regret it.

Fancy Hotel of the Week: Four Seasons Seattle

 

When the sun does come out in Seattle there is no more beautiful place on earth.  The unfortunate thing is, that, unless you have your own yacht, there are not so many places to just lounge and enjoy the view.

 

 

Yes, there are the lakes and the cold ocean beaches, but there are very few loungers and margaritas types of places, and, as you have probably guessed, I am very much a loungers and margaritas type of girl.

So when it became apparent on Thursday that temperatures were set to soar in Seattle for the Mother’s Day weekend, we decided to throw caution to the wind and book into Seattle’s Four Seasons hotel for a ‘staycation’.  The Four Seasons is unusual for Pacific Northwest hotels in having an outdoor infinity pool, with breathtaking south-west facing views out over Elliott Bay to the Olympic mountains beyond, which reminded me of the similar views we had from our downtown apartment when we first moved to Seattle.  

 

 

The pool area also features a hot tub and fire pit and is protected on three sides by the hotel and other high rise buildings, so I would imagine that it would still be very pleasant in the cooler months of the year.

The beautiful spring green planting creates a little rooftop oasis and exactly matches the beautiful spring green umbrellas, which looked amazing against the blue sky and turquoise water.

 

 

The pool itself is heated to 85 degrees and also gently salinated, which makes the water deliciously soft and somehow bouncy, and there was plenty of room for the Minx and the Husband to practise their synchronised swimming routines.

 

 

Inside the décor is luxurious, clean and contemporary, with an emphasis on natural stone and woods, soft autumnal hues and organic shapes, with lots of interesting artworks and glass.

 

 

 

In the lobby, slatted wood walls are juxtaposed with intricate stone floors and striped carpets to give a clean, modern almost Asian feel.

Oh and the breakfast wasn’t bad either.

 

 

We were also really impressed with the welcome given to the Minx.  When we booked they asked for her name and age, and there was a welcome pack waiting for her in the room, with a little treasure hunt questionnaire for her to complete.

 

 

It’s the first hotel we’ve ever stayed in which provided a mini kids robe and slippers, to the Minx’s enormous delight and to cap things off, they also gave her a little pink sock monkey, from which she became inseparable. And yes, I do know that my daughter is INCREDIBLY spoiled.

 

Here is ‘Chaussette’ lounging by the pool.

 

We left feeling incredibly relaxed and asking ourselves why on earth we haven’t done this sooner.  Truly that view is good for the soul.  Four Seasons Seattle, we will most DEFINITELY be back.

 

Thanks once again to the lovely Sheri at Pacific Northwest Journeys for arranging our stay.   We paid for the hotel room ourselves.

Pinterest Take 5: Persimmon

 

I bought an orange, or, more precisely, that orange-veering-to-coral-pink known as persimmon, sweatshirt last week.  At least five people have since told me that it is the ‘colour of the season’.

All I know is that if you have boring mid-brown hair and pale skin with a warm undertone as I have, there is no more flattering colour on earth, and you will have to rip this sweatshirt from my back.

It’s been popping up all over Pinterest too.

 

 

1. Bottega Veneta Silk Chiffon Colour Block Dress at Net-A-Porter via Anne Deotte 

2. Jasper Conran for Wedgwood Kilim Teacup and Saucer via Mackenzie

3. Labyrinth Persimmon Pillow by Dwell Studio via Bibi Rogers

4. Fleuvog Sandra shoes via Casapinka

5. Peach, Strawberry and Vodka Popsicles by Endless Simmer via Kimberly Taylor Not quite persimmons I know, but the colour is persimmon perfection and they did seem a little more seasonally appropriate.

Adventures In Baking: Meyer Lemon, Rhubarb & Pistachio Bundt Cake

 

Continuing in my quest to make the most of my new bundt tin, and take over the world one bundt cake at a time, a couple of weeks back I made a Meyer Lemon, Rhubarb and Pistachio Bundt Cake.  This ethereally soft and springlike bundt cake couldn’t be more different from the squidgy, fudgy chocolate cake I made for the Joy the Baker event, but it was still devoured with alarming alacrity by the whole family.

 

 

This cake is an adaptation of a recipe from Kimberly Taylor’s charming blog which bowled me over the minute it popped up on my Facebook page.  Her cake features Meyer lemons and rhubarb, but I couldn’t contemplate putting these two ingredients together without adding pistachios, the flavours are a match made in heaven and the delicate pink and green pastel colours are so very spring-like.

Meyer lemons are a wonderful seasonal American delicacy, thought to be a cross between a true lemon and a mandarin.  If you can’t get hold of them then normal lemons will do just fine. I amended the recipe by adding in some ground almonds/almond meal, some pistachio flavouring and sprinkling the finished cake with whole pistachios.

 

Ingredients

For the cake

1 cup butter

1 3/4 cups bakers’ (caster) sugar

zest of one lemon (Meyer or normal)

3 large eggs

1/2 tsp pistachio flavouring (or almond extract)

Juice of 1 Meyer lemon or 1/2 normal large lemon

1 3/4 cups all purpose (plain) flour

3/4 cup almond meal (ground almonds)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup buttermilk

3 cups fresh rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

 

For the glaze

2 1/2 cups icing/powdered sugar

Juice from one lemon

2 tablespoons softened butter

Whole pistachios to sprinkle on top

 

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/ 180 degrees C.

Brush melted butter into every single nook and cranny of your bundt pan and then shake in a couple of tablespoons of flour, so that every part of the surface is greased and floured. Shake out the excess flour.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together into a bowl. Stir in the almonds.

Cream together the butter, sugar and lemon zest until very pale and fluffy. Whisk the eggs together in a small jug and then little by little beat them into the creamed mixture, scraping down the sides as necessary. Add the pistachio flavouring and lemon juice.

With the stand mixer on a lowish speed, add a third of the flour mixture and then a third of the buttermilk and then alternate until all the flour and milk are fully incorporated. Mix for one additional minute.

Stir in the chopped rhubarb with a wooden spoon. Pour the batter into the prepared bundt tin. Bake for 1 hour. Insert a skewer or a stick of spaghetti and if comes out clean the cake is ready. If not return to the oven for a few more minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Set a timer and leave the cake in the pan for 20 minutes, no more, no less. When 20 minutes is up (the optimum time, according to Joy the Baker, to ensure best bundt removal) turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool fully.

To make the glaze, whisk the butter and lemon juice together. Whisk in half the icing sugar.  Add the second cup of icing sugar and whisk until incorporated.  The glaze should be thin enough to pour, but thick enough to cling to the cake.  Either add sugar or juice to amend the consistency as appropriate.

Sprinkly a few whole pistachios over the top and serve when the glaze is fully set.

 

Homemade Vanilla Extract

 

At my baking class on Monday night (and thanks so much to everyone who supported it in any way, either by being there or spreading the word on Facebook and Twitter) we talked about making your own vanilla extract and I realised I hadn’t shared this with you on the blog.

 

 

As you can imagine, since I am a cake baker, vanilla extract is one of the most used ingredients in my kitchen, which was not good given how fiendishly expensive it is.

After doing some research online, I tried making it last summer, and I am utterly delighted with the results.  Like so many other homemade foodstuffs, there’s no turning back when you’ve tasted homemade. And this is so, so EASY.

All you need is a smallish bottle (depending on how much extract you want to make), some unflavoured vodka or white rum and some vanilla pods. 

 

 

I buy my vanilla pods in bulk via Amazon, so much cheaper than the single pods in glass jars you find in supermarkets. As for alcohol, if you want a pure vanilla flavour use unflavoured vodka.  I however prefer to use a white rum such as Bacardi.  The rum has a flavour that goes very well with vanilla, and adds an additional something, something to cakes and desserts.  But which alcohol you choose is up to you.

Then all you need to do is fill your bottle with alcohol, score a few vanilla pods lengthwise so the seeds are showing (don’t scrape them out) and then add them to rum or vodka.  How many you add is up to you and will depend on how the big the bottle is, how strong you want the extract to be and how many you can afford to use.  I currently have around six in my biggish bottle, but experiment with what seems right for you.

 

 

Here’s my bottle posing out in the sunshine last summer, just after I’d made it.

Then leave the bottle in a cool, dry place (mine is in the fridge door) somewhere where’ll you see it often. Then, every so often, pick up the bottle and give it a shake.  After several weeks the clear alcohol will darken to brown and will be ready to use.  Thereafter just keep the bottle topped up with additional alcohol and vanilla pods as necessarily and depending on how strong you want your extract to be.

 

 

If you want to get going on your Christmas gifts now (hahahahahahahahaha!:-Ed) then homemade vanilla extract is a very quick, easy and thoughtful gift for the baker in your life if you put it in a fancy bottle.

 

How To Bake British Without Freaking Out

 

 

I just wanted to let you all know that there are still some places left for the class I’m giving on Monday night at fabulous Seattle cookbook store Book Larder.

And it would be lovely to see blog readers there.

The class is called Baking In Translation – How to Bake British Without Freaking Out and is for anyone who’s tried to use a recipe from British website or cookbook and been flummoxed by the strange ingredients or metric measurements.

I’ll be covering the basics of weighing and measuring in metric rather than using cup measures; discussing differences in flours, sugars and creams; translating strange ingredient names and suggesting the best sources and substitutions for hard-to-find ingredients.  I’ll be demonstrating how to make a traditional English Victoria sponge cake and maybe, if there’s time, English flapjacks (sort of sticky sweet granola bars, not pancakes) and there’ll be treats to sample.

The class will run from 6.30 to around 8.30 and you can find full details and buy tickets here. Here’s my previous blog post on the subject.

I’d love to meet Seattle blog readers and if you can’t make it, anything you could do to promote the class via various social media would be very much appreciated.

See you on Monday!

 

Things I Am Loving: Laser Cut Nori

 

Speaking, as we were, of lace effects in unexpected but obvious places, I just wanted to share my love for these award-winning nori sheets (found via JeannieJeannie).

 

 

Ad agency I&S BBDO Inc in Japan was asked to create an online campaign for the Umino Seaweed Store, a company producing nori (the sheets of seaweed used in making sushi) that had been badly affected by the tsunami.

Unfortunately, and particularly in a Japanese context, nori is a very boring product to advertise, so the company looked for ways to differentiate the product and get it some online buzz. 

Remember I did a certificate in Online Marketing last year?  Well, we were told again and again that original and persuasive content is the key to online campaigns that work, so the agency’s strategy of  tweaking the product itself in an original and beautiful way was utterly inspired.

Because of the horrible circumstances of the tsunami, the agency looked to traditional Japanese designs for longevity, good fortune, hope, happiness etc. to create a positive vibe around the product and the campaign has since won many awards.

 

 

After poking round the Internet, I discovered that Seattle’s very own Food Geek had also had a very similar idea (and made some beautiful photos). Feast your eyes on these.

 

 

 

 

Can someone please produce these commercially? They would make such beautiful onigiri.

The Sun Always Shines On TV

 

 

But apparently not in real life.  Our trip to Southern California was mostly foggy and overcast and not very warm. Especially galling as the weather was apparently delightful in Seattle.  The photo shows our first glimpse of the sun in three days as the plane soared over a thick blanket of cloud in LA. 

But still we did manage to have a great time. Thanks to L’Auberge Del Mar for another magical stay (see last year’s blog post here) and to the chic and groovy resorts of Del Mar, Encinitas, La Jolla and Laguna Beach for showing us beautiful beaches, whales and seals in abundance. We also had a surprisingly fun time at Seaworld (actually it was surprisingly fun for me, for the Minx it was expectedly awesome).

We ate epic fish tacos at Raul’s Shack in Encinitas, legendary shrimp tacos at El Pescador Fish Market in La Jolla (are you seeing a theme here?), excellent gelato at Gelateria Frizzante also in La Jolla, a superb breakfast at Americana in Del Mar and took my elderly aunt for a rather touristy but surprisingly good value and good champagne brunch at Las Brisas in Laguna Beach. The new chef at Kitchen 1540 at L’Auberge is also doing an extremely good job as far we can see.

SoCal, we will be back, despite your terrible weather.

 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have overflowing suitcases, an overflowing garden and an overflowing inbox to attend to and beautiful Seattle sunshine that has my name on it, so better blogging service will resume tomorrow. In the meantime last week’s amazing guest posts are worth a read.

The Best Easter Simnel Cake

 

So, Simnel Cake.

I know I should have posted this last week but I actually wanted to try the cake and see if this recipe was worth sharing with you.  And wow it really is.  Suffice it to say that four days after Easter this cake is already but a distant memory.  Do yourselves a favour and bookmark this recipe for next year.

 

First up a bit of history.  Apparently Simnel Cakes go back at least to medieval times when they were traditionally served on Laetare Sunday, a day in the middle of Lent when the Lenten fast was relaxed (sounds like cheating to me).  Since this day coincides with Mother’s Day in the UK, it was apparently the thing in Victorian times for daughters in service to bake a Simnel Cake to take home to their mothers.

Nowadays it’s thought of as an Easter cake, though it’s not very often made.  I think this is the third one I’ve made in my life.  Which is a shame, as it’s extremely delicious and not at all difficult.

Traditionally it’s a light fruit cake, stuffed full of vine fruits and spices, with a layer of marzipan baked into the cake and more toasted marzipan placed on the top.  There are always eleven marzipan balls placed on the top to represent the Apostles minus Judas Iscariot.  I also like to add a puddle of icing and some Cadbury’s Mini Eggs (they’re in the Bible somewhere, right?), but anything Easter-y such as chicks or flowers would do.  I think it’s safe to say that if you don’t like marzipan you will not like this cake.  If you do, though (and as far as I’m concerned marzipan should be a separate food group) then this tastes a little like a fruity, squidgy, non-bready stollen. 

If you live in the UK or anywhere where it is possible to get hold of good marzipan, then you need to buy around 450g/1lb of the stuff.  However, making your own marzipan is very quick and easy and it certainly tastes infinitely better than the peculiar canned almond paste I’ve found in the US.

I’m afraid I haven’t had time to convert to cup measures.  Time to get out those weighing scales!

This recipe is a combination of two or three recipes I found on the BBC website. Most traditional Simnel cake recipes are very similar though.

Ingredients

For the marzipan/almond paste

250g/9oz caster/baker’s sugar

250g/9oz ground almonds/almond meal

2 free-range eggs, beaten

1tsp almond essence or to taste

Mix the sugar and almonds in a large bowl and add the almond essence and enough beaten egg to turn the mass into a soft, sticky ‘dough’.  Knead everything together for one minute or so, until it becomes smooth and pliable. If it is too sticky add a little more sugar and almonds.  You want a workable mixture that is possible to roll out.  The marzipan will happily wait a day or two in the fridge.

For the cake

110g/4 oz raisins

110g/4oz sultanas/golden raisins

110g/4oz glacé/candied cherries (in the UK use those delicious undyed ones, I’ve yet to find a supplier of non-HFCS, undyed cherries in the US, if you come across such a delight please let me know)

110g/4oz currants/Zante currants

50g/2oz chopped candied peel (in the UK, you can buy pots of mixed peel, in the US I mix my own from orange, lemon and citron peel)

225g/8oz butter, softened

110g/4oz light muscovado sugar/soft brown sugar

110g/4oz caster/baker’s sugar

4 large eggs

225g/8oz self-raising flour (or 8oz all-purpose flour with 1 tsp baking powder)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 lemons, grated zest only

2 tsp ground mixed spice (or 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 tsp ground cloves. You could also use pumpkin spice but it will taste a little different).

 

For the glace’ icing

225g/8oz icing sugar/powdered sugar

Enough water to mix to a pouring consistency.

 

Preparation method

1. Cut the cherries into quarters, put in a sieve and rinse under running water. Drain well then dry thoroughly on kitchen paper. Do the same with your peel if it is sticky with HFCS.
   

2. Weigh out all the fruit into a large bowl. Essentially you need around 500g/18oz of mixed dried fruit, so if you want to make some substitutions (pineapple, dried cherries or cranberries might be nice) or play around with the proportions then be my guest.  This mix is the traditional one for a Simnel cake though. If you’re feeling fancy then you can soak the fruit overnight in some amontillado sherry, but I didn’t with this cake.
   

3. Preheat the oven to 150C/280F/Gas 2. Grease and line a 20cm/ 8in Springform cake tin.
   

4. Cream the butter and sugars together in the stand mixer until very pale and soft.
   

5. Beat in the eggs one at a time with a tablespoon or two of flour between each egg addition to stabilise the mixture and prevent curdling.  If it curdles a little it’s not a big deal.
   

6. Stir in the rest of the flour and salt, the lemon zest and the spices. Mix until fully combined.
   

7. Stir in the dried fruit with a wooden spoon until it’s fully distributed through the mixture.  The mixture should be of a soft ‘dropping’ consistency.  If it is too dry then stir in a tablespoon or so of milk.
   

8. Spoon half the cake mix into the prepared cake tin
   

9. Take one-third of the marzipan and roll it out to a circle the size of the tin and then place on top of the cake mixture.
   

10. Spoon the remaining cake mixture over top and level the surface. I like to create a slight indentation in the centre so the cake doesn’t get too domed.
    

11. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 2 1/4 hours, or until well risen, evenly brown and firm to the touch.  A skewer or stick of spaghetti stuck into the centre of the cake should come out clean.
    

12. Cover with aluminium foil after one hour if the top is browning too quickly. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack.
    

13. When the cake is cooled, turn it upside down.  If you want brush the top with a little warmed apricot jam and roll out half the remaining marzipan to fit the top. Press firmly on the top and crimp the edges to decorate. (My marzipan was sticky enough not to require jam).
    

14. Make a stubby snake with the remaining marzipan third and cut it into 11 equal pieces. Form the marzipan into 11 balls.
    

15. Brush the marzipan with beaten egg and arrange the marzipan balls around the edge of the cake. Brush the tops of the balls with beaten egg and then carefully place the cake under a hot grill/broiler until the top is lightly toasted or, as I did, use a chef’s blowtorch.  If you’re using the grill be careful not to set fire to the cake.
    

16. Mix up the icing sugar and water to a pouring consistency and pour a puddle onto the surface of the cake.  When set, decorate with Easter-y things.

 

This is what your cake should look like inside. The layer of baked almond paste makes it all juicy, succulent and not at all dry, unlike many fruitcakes of my acquaintance.

Happy belated Easter!

 

I believe there are still a few tickets left for my ‘Baking in Translation’ class at Book Larder, where we will discuss the mysteries of baking using British recipes and using weighing scales rather measuring cups .  Buy them here, I’d love to meet you.

That Was The Week That Was: Spring in Seattle Edition

 

Oh goodness, it’s been ages since I’ve done one of these.  It’s been a pastel-coloured, blossom-filled, playing in the sunshine, baking goodies couple of weeks.

 

 

On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.

Happy Easter!

I made a traditional English Easter Simnel cake to eat this weekend but I’m not going to have time to get the recipe up for you until early next week. Still here’s a pretty picture for you, and whatever and however you’re celebrating this weekend (our Easter is rather heathen and chocolate-fuelled it must be admitted) have fun!

Pinterest Take 5: Multicoloured Polka Dots

 

This week on Pinterest we’ve got spots before the eyes.

DIY tags with transparent polka dot stickers from Tokketok via Cinzia Ruggieri.

 

 

Iphone wallpaper from Gallery Hanahou via Ricki Mountain

 

 

DIY tablecloth from Oh Happy Day via Cinzia Ruggieri

 

 

Funfetti Layer Cake from Sweetapolita via Grace Kang.

 

 

This idea for pre-sorting your laundry is INSPIRED.  I just wish I had an empty closet where I could do this in our house.

From Brick City Love via Shauna Christensen.

Baking In Translation: How to Cook British Without Freaking Out

 

 

I just wanted to let readers in the Seattle area know that I’ll be teaching a baking class at Book Larder on April 30th entitled Baking in Translation. I’m nervous already, so it would be wonderful to see as many friendly faces as possible in the audience.  And of course, if you’re a Seattle blog reader, do come and laugh at my funny accent, I’d love to meet you.

 

 

The class has arisen from the occasional blog posts I write lamenting all the difficulties I’ve had over the past five years translating British recipes into American and vice versa.

We will cover weighing ingredients in metric versus measuring with cup measures; differences in terminology and vocabulary, such as flour and cream equivalents; where to source strange ingredients in the Seattle area and what to substitute if you can’t get hold of them, and discussing things like pan sizes and oven temperatures. Please come armed with any questions that have been bugging you and we’ll try to cover them all.

While we’re chatting, I will be showing you how to bake a classic English Victoria sponge (measured out in metric) and, if we have time, English flapjacks, using weird British ingredients like porridge oats, golden syrup and sultanas. There will also be treats available to taste.

I will be putting together a detailed hand-out containing all my hard-won knowledge which will be yours to take home, and by the end of it, the world of British cooking will be your oyster and you’ll be buried knee-deep in the Guardian’s food website and ordering obscure English cookbooks books from Amazon UK.

 

Tickets cost a bargainaceous $25 and can be ordered here.  Spaces are limited to 24. Oh and if you haven’t been before, you will adore Book Larder so come armed with lots of money too.

The pictures are from last autumn when I made five Victoria sponges for Seattle’s annual Will Bake for Food event (click through and you’ll see one of my sponges out in the wild).

A Shopping Trip to Portland: Part 1

 

Planning a trip to Portland any time soon?  A couple of Fridays ago I headed off down the I-5 at the crack of dawn in search of hipsters, birds, excellent food, perfect coffee, imaginative shops, and no sales tax, and was not disappointed.  The Friday was spent shopping with girlfriends, then the Minx and the Husband drove down to meet me and we stayed on for a great weekend.

If you’re thinking of going to Portland, here’s what you should do.

Firstly make sure that Myra of Seattle Bon Vivant and Lilian of Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs are with you. These ladies sure know how to eat and shop and they’re fabulously fun company too.

 

 

When you arrive head first to Barista in the Pearl District for one of the finest cups of coffee you’ll have anywhere (and I live in Seattle), together with an extremely acceptable almond croissant.

You’ll need fortification before browsing through the crazy that is Cargo.  Just round the corner from Barista, Cargo calls itself a ‘showroom, flea market, and international bazaar’ and features bizarre and beautiful finds from Indonesia, China, Japan, Thailand and Mexico.  I guarantee you’ll find nothing in here that you need, but plenty that you’ll want. I bought some antique scissors and a small lucky waving cat charm for the Minx’s backpack. See what I mean?

 

 

Next cross the river and go to The Meadow in North Portland’s Mississippi district.  This tiny shop sells salt, flowers, chocolate, wine and bitters, all personal passions of owner Mark Bitterman, author of the wonderful cookbook Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes.

I met Mark when he came to Seattle and, together with Myra, hosted a creative and delectable salt-based dinner.

This shop shouldn’t work, but it does, beautifully, because so much knowledge and passion has gone into the carefully curated selections. Just look at those walls of salt and chocolate.  I was tempted to buy a block of pink Hawaiian baking salt, but our kitchen has enough clutter. One day. 

I contented myself with a big bag of sel gris instead.

 

 

Then head off for lunch at Pok Pok, which serves carefully authentic regional Thai and Vietnamese streetfood under a heated awning.

 

Photo by Lilian Speirs

For some reason I didn’t manage to take any photos here.  However, here is Lilian’s detailed review, with a ton of photos. Like her I would have been happy to eat the phat si ew, a classic dish of stir-fried rice noodles, succulent Carlton Farms pork, Chinese broccoli and egg, all day.  Pok Pok is a fun, enjoyable place for a Portland pit stop, with great food and a buzzy atmosphere, deservedly a renowned Portland hangout.

After a hearty lunch it’s time to start shopping in earnest.

First go to Flora which sells a girly selection of scented candles, jewellery, stationery, art, apothecary items and general nicknackery.  I came away with a gorgeous fig-scented Tatine candle.  I wasn’t familiar with this range before, but loved the simple glass containers and the beautiful perfumes. The Minx also liked Flora very much when we went back the next day.

 

 

Then head over to Canoe, by way of glorious yarn shop Knit Purl.  I forgot to take pics again, but did come away with two skeins of gorgeous naturally-dyed laceweight linen yarn. One has to have priorities.

Anyway, back to Canoe.  This shop has a wonderful selection of modern tchotchkes and home accessories, chosen with taste and flair.  The Husband particularly liked this shop when we returned the following day and it’s a particularly great place to browse for gifts for men.  I ended up with a new litter bin, a pink piggy bank for the Minx and some little glass bowls.

 

 

After visiting more shops that I’ll get to in part 2 of this guide, we finished up at modern furniture shop Hive before settling down for a very well-earned and again excellent coffee at Cafe Allora, a little bit of Milan in downtown Portland.

 

 

Finally we braved the immensely long line at Ken’s Artisan Pizza. We had to wait for over two hours, fortunately seated at a back table where we could drink plenty of wine, but the pizza was worth it when we got it, which means it’s VERY good pizza indeed.  Particularly the bacon pizza. Man, that was yummy.

The Minx and the Husband made it down the freeway in time to join us for an extra bacon pizza and dessert and we then waved goodbye as Myra and Lilian headed off into the night. I was left wondering why I don’t do day trips to Portland more often.

Find out what the Minx, the Husband and I got up to in Part 2.

Eat It, Don’t Tweet It

 

Or a day in the life of my Instagram feed.

 

 

Maybe this is why only 41% of you follow me on social media.

Seriously chaps, thank you for the amazing feedback I’m getting through the Urtak. I really appreciate you taking the time and trouble to respond.  Some expected answers and some surprises so far.

That Was The Week That Was: Weekend In Portland Edition

 

I forgot to do a TWTWTW last week, which was silly as I had some cool shots from our weekend shopping trip to Portland.

It turned out to be a sunshine and showers, great food and great coffee, groovy shops and pink petals sort of a weekend.

 

We had a wonderful time There’s a blog post on shopping in Portland in your near future.

Adventures in Baking : Chocolate Bundt Cake with Chocolate Sour Cream Glaze

 

 

Having a bad morning? Chocolate cake always makes things better I find, and this one is a complete doozy – dense, moist and fudgey with smoky almost indiscernible undertones of coffee.  See, you’re feeling better already.  And hardly any carbs I’m sure.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve told you yet about Book Larder.   It’s a fabulous new Seattle shop modelled on my darling Books for Cooks in London, which I used to live round the corner from and still sorely miss. Book Larder not only offers an amazing range of both popular and hard-to-come-by cookbooks, it also hosts a number of events and demonstrations from famous cookbook authors and chefs.

 

 

Last week, they were hosting a book signing for food blogger Joy the Baker and I was asked if I wanted to bake something for the event from the Joy the Baker Cookbook: 100 Simple and Comforting Recipes

It’s a wonderful book, chock full of original and droolworthy comfort food recipes written in Joy’s chatty style with an accompanying photo for every dish and lots of excellent baking tips.   It’s also very American, featuring lots of maple syrup, bacon and peanut butter, cookies, marshmallows and waffles, to the extent that I was a little intimidated.  What is a ‘toasted coconut Dutch baby with banana and pineapple’ when it’s at home? What the heck is a ‘buttermilk skillet cake with walnut praline topping’ supposed to taste like?

 

 

I decided to test the book out properly by making a bundt cake.  Bundt cakes are ubiquitous in the US but I’ve never come across them in the UK and certainly never made one.  Could Joy the Baker teach this English girl how to bake a bundt?  (This was of course mostly a good excuse to buy myself a fancy bundt pan)

As far as I understand it, a bundt cake is just a cake baked in a bundt tin, which was traditionally a ring-shaped ridged affair.  In the US you can nowadays buy bundt pans in the shape of forts or football stadiums, roses or pumpkins – the challenge with all of them is making sure that the giant slab of cake with no filling is moist and decadent rather than dry and dull.  I needn’t have worried. Joy’s recipe features sour cream, vegetable oil and freshly-brewed coffee, which makes for a very wet batter and a delectably moist cake.  In fact, having had some cake in the fridge for a few days now, I can confirm that it just gets moister and fudgier and more delicious with keeping.

 

 

I was also nervous about getting the thing out of the pan. After taking lots of advice on Twitter (thanks particularly to Jeanne Sauvage aka @fourchickens) I brushed the pan with melted butter, sprayed it with Bake Easy for good measure and floured it to within an inch of its life.  I then took Joy’s advice (she has a whole section on getting bundts out of tins) to wait for 20 minutes while the cake cooled in the pan before taking it out.  As a result of all this advice, both cakes I made just slid out of the pans with no fuss. Aren’t they pretty? I nearly burst with pride and couldn’t stop patting them. It seemed almost a shame to glaze them at all.

 

 

Joy’s bundt is finished with a chocolate coffee ganache. This almost caused a bit of a commotion by refusing to set, meaning that I turned up for the event with only five minutes to spare. If you’re making this for an event I suggest you make it the day before. The cake honestly improves with fridging and then you won’t have a last-minute ganache-fuelled panic.

The glaze is also maybe the one thing I’d change about the cake.  The cake and ganache are surprisingly unsweet and sophisticated, perfect for adult tastes, but the Minx has declared that she doesn’t much like the mocha frosting.  If making this again with kids in mind I would replace the sour cream and coffee with normal cream for a sweeter frosting.  If you’re catering for adults though this is perfect as is.

Sorry non-American peeps, I didn’t have time to make the conversions from cups to weight.  Time to get out those cup measures again!

 

Chocolate Bundt Cake with Chocolate Sour Cream Glaze

makes one 10-inch bundt cake

For the Cake:

1 1/4 cups freshly brewed hot coffee

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Pernigotti which is just insanely good)

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted

1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt

2 1/2 teaspoons baking (bicarbonate of) soda

2 cups sugar

3 large eggs

1 1/4 cups sour cream

1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons canola oil

 

For the Glaze:

6 ounces semisweet chocolate

3/4 cup (11/2 sticks) unsalted butter

1/2 cup sour cream, at room temperature

4 tablespoons freshly-brewed hot coffee

 

Place an oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.

Grease and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan (see above) and set aside.

 

 

To make the cake:

 

In a small bowl, whisk together the coffee and cocoa powder until smooth and no lumps remain. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt and baking soda. Set aside

In the bowl of a stand mixer fit with a whisk attachment, whisk together the sugar and eggs until thick and pale. . Add the sour cream and oil and whisk until well incorporated.

Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and whisk until the flour is well incorporated. Add the cooled coffee mixture and gently mix to incorporate.  The batter should be loose and smooth.

Pour into the prepared cake pan and bake for around 50 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the cake comes out clean.

Let the cake cool completely in the pan and then invert onto a cooling rack. Cake should be completely cooled before frosting.

 

To make the glaze:

Bring 2 inches of water to simmer in a medium pan. Place the chopped chocolate (I used chips) and butter into a heatproof bowl. Place over the simmering water, making sure that the bottom of the bowl does not touch the boiling water. Remove the bowl from the heat when all of the chocolate bits have melted.

Remove from the heat and leave to cool for around 20 minutes. Stir in 2 tablespoons of the hot coffee, followed by the sour cream. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of coffee and stir until glossy.

This ganache will be very liquid and will need to spend half an hour or so in the fridge before it’s ready to be spread on the cakes, and will probably need an hour or so in the fridge subsequently if you’re planning on transporting the cake anywhere.

This is where I admit that I actually wasn’t a reader of Joy’s blog (I’ve started now though – I love her ‘voice’). It seems there are a ton of people who are though. It was standing room only to meet her.

Please don’t look at the picture of me.  My hair was suffering from being raked-through too often by my fingers during my ganache-fuelled panic.

It’s Back! Mad Men Season 5

 

I  can’t tell you how excited I was to see these pics go up on the AMC website.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, Don Draper and co are finally going to be back on our screens.  It really has been far, far too long.

 

 

We’ve been invited to a premiere party and I’m thinking of baking a Black Forest Gateau.  I know that was considered to be the height of elegance in 60s Britain, but I’m not sure about the US. Should I be throwing Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup into a hotpot instead?  I believe some sort of cocktail might be in order too.

 

 

I had a pet theory last season that whichever woman on the show is closest to Don’s heart ends up wearing green (watch season 4, it works!), and on that basis I’m glad to see that Don is still very fond of Joanie and Peggy and has major issues with the ex-Mrs Draper.  Speaking of which, where is the soon-to-be-new Mrs Draper?  My other theory is that she’s going to turn out to be a bunny boiler extraordinaire.

 

 

So questions for you. Will you be watching? Are you excited?  Are you having a party?   What retro 60s American food should I make? Am I the only woman in the world who doesn’t want to jump into bed with Don Draper? Which Mad Men woman are you?  I’m Peggy, though my life is currently more season one Betty (without the double-life living husband).

 

Blogging Your Way: NYC Road Trip Part 2

 

 

Day two of the Blogging Your Way workshop (other pics here and here), found Leslie Shewring from A Creative Mint taking her day in the sun (quite literally as the sun came out in New York after two days of Seattle-like torrential rain).

After hearing Leslie’s inspiring story of clicking with Holly online and subsequently striking up a great blogging and teaching partnership, we settled down for a day of more practical creativity.

 

 

The biggest thing I took away from the workshop is that styling is ALL about telling stories in an image.

Whenever I’m styling something I know I always look at the colours and shapes first, forget about the mood or story I’m trying to convey, and then wonder why the image seems flat and dead. I can be very dense sometimes. Of course, it’s all about the storytelling. Well, duh.

 

 

Leslie showed us how she pulls together inspiration boards to figure out moods and colour schemes.  She’s just one of those people who can instinctively pull together a bunch of random stuff and magically turn it into a coherent and pleasing whole.

It does help that she has some great props – she gave us lots of sources for what she called ‘curated hoarding’.  This was the second most useful thing I learned at the workshop.  Now I can explain to the Husband what I’m doing when he complains about the crap on my desk.

 

 

We then talked about composition, lighting and the basics of photography and Holly gave us a ton of tips about styling and photographing interiors.  Then for the rest of the day we had time to play ourselves and make the most of the lovely light at Divine Studio and Leslie’s pretty props.

Here’s a little ‘inspiration board’ I pulled together, with things I’d pulled off my desk at home.

 

 

 

And here are a few shots I styled and photographed of the beautiful food.  Can you see what stories I’m trying to tell?

 

 

Leslie encouraged us to explore our subjects from lots of different angles to find the best composition.

 

At the end of the day we all had fun taking pictures of all our new-found friends. Of course a huge part of the value and pleasure of doing these sorts of events is meeting a ton of inspirational and creative women.  New friends include Tina, Audrey, Michele, Natalie and Gretchen, Jessica, Ashley, Amanda and Fiona (seen below, who’d flown in all the way from England).  Also special thanks to Marianne, for being the most charming and easy-to-live-with roommate one could wish for.  I highly recommend taking a stroll through the links above, you’ll find some super charming and talented women and some new and fabulously inspirational blogs.

And once more a HUGE thank you to Holly and Leslie. You ladies rock SO hard.

 

The simple crepe paper hangings Leslie had put up made a great back drop for photos.

 

One day I’ll have a picture taken with Holly where I’m not looking either blurred or deranged (See also San Francisco pics). 

 

Knock Knock, I Love You

As if to prove how very much in sync old married couples like me and the Husband are (it’s going to be fifteen years in November for goodness sakes), we both got each other bars of chocolate yesterday from the Knock Knock range of graphic stationery.  Love the boxes, and the chocolate isn’t bad at all.

It’s telling that they’re being sold by the only decent stationery shop round these parts. Surely we didn’t both rush out at the last minute to buy our gifts? 

I won’t tell you which boxes I checked on which covers though. 

Buy them here

Last Minute Valentines Ideas

 

So it’s the afternoon before Valentines Day and the fancy restaurants are all booked, you forgot to buy a love token for your sweetheart and tomorrow is shaping up to be a very bad day indeed.

But fear not, as long as you’ve got some heart-shaped cutters or moulds lying around all sorts of quick homemade Valentines ideas are at your disposal.

These Valentines sugar cookies were originally on sale through Etsy shop Sugar Sanctuary but really wouldn’t be too difficult to make.  Here’s a great sugar cookie recipe.

Suze has a great tutorial for how to make natural sugar hearts in candy moulds for your beloved’s coffee.

 

 

The Novice Chef shows us how to make Marbled Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies (not sure I love anyone enough to share these).

 

 

Sit down with your kids and make Valentines Rice Krispie Treats, courtesy of Lisa.

 

 

For a romantic dinner Annie suggests making four cheese ravioli

 

 

Or if you don’t have heart-shaped cutters, why not do twirly things with cinnamon rolls?

 

 

Or if you have cutters but no cooking skills, how about some heart-shaped roast potatoes?

 

 

Or a heart-shaped packed lunch?

 

 

Finally, if you have neither heart-shaped cutters nor cooking skills, why not just put your toddler to work instead, while you relax with a lovely cup of tea.

 

 

Happy Valentines’ Day my little chickadees!

Adventures in Cooking – Shepherd’s Pie

 

Just after Christmas we held a little party and I decided to take a leaf out of Jeffery Archer – British author, politician, crook and all-round slimebag’s - book and make shepherd’s pie; which he apparently used to serve at his high society parties washed down with vast quantities of Krug. 

 

I don’t agree with Jeffrey Archer on very much, but have to say that shepherd’s pie makes fabulous party food. This quintessentially traditional British comfort dish is tasty, rich and satisfying; easy to fork up while standing; can be made beforehand and baked just before the party; sits around happily; freezes beautifully afterwards and delights adults and kids alike.  However, it’s also quick and easy to prepare and makes a fabulous midweek meal.

But before we get on to the recipe I must interrupt this broadcast for a quick semantics lesson.

<pedantry> Firstly it is spelled Shepherd’s Pie not Shepard’s Pie, because it is named after people who used to er, herd sheps and not after a has-been Hollywood actor. Secondly it is called Shepherd’s Pie because it contains lamb ie. sheep meat. You can make it with all beef, but in that case it is more properly known as Cottage Pie since shepherds had nothing to do with it. </pedantry>

The meat you choose is important.  Traditionally it is made with the ground up leftovers from the Sunday roast, either lamb or beef, but i) you’re unlikely to have enough leftover nowadays and ii) it can be a little dry.  I find it better to use at least half raw ground (minced) lamb or beef, though if you do have some leftover meat, it is fabulous added to the meat mixture towards the end of the initial cooking period.

As I mentioned, you can use either lamb or beef, though all raw ground lamb can sometimes be a little greasy. For my Christmas pie I used half raw ground lamb and half raw ground beef and this worked out great. For my base recipes I used one entitled ‘Sarah’s Amazing Cottage Pie’ that I copied down from a friend ages ago, combined with the recipe from the Ivy Cookbook, which gives dishes served at London’s eponymous celeb hangout (it’s a great and accessible cookbook if you can get hold of it).

 

 

The beauty of shepherd’s pie, though, is that is it a fabulous vehicle for experimentation. Leftover roasted vegetables in the fridge? Throw them into the meat sauce or mash them into the potato topping.  Want to stretch out the meat with fresh vegetables, beans, or feta cheese? I won’t stop you. Want to try different herbs, or flavourings? Give it a whirl.  Here are the basics, with lots of suggestions for options and additions, the rest is up to you.

The following quantities makes a reasonably sized shepherd’s pie for a family of four. Scale up or down as you wish and remember that you don’t have to be precise here.  All that’s important is that the meat sauce does not have too much gravy and you need to have about 2 inches of potato topping over the meat to prevent oozing.

 

INGREDIENTS

For the Filling

1 1/2 lbs minced/ground meat (see above)

salt and pepper

A couple of tablespoons vegetable oil

1  large onion, finely chopped

2 carrots (optional) either finely chopped or sliced

Several cloves crushed garlic (optional and definitely not traditional)

1 tablespoon flour

1/2 pint (1 1/2 cups) of good quality beef stock

A couple glasses red wine (optional)

1 tablespoon tomato puree (optional)

a glug of Worcestershire sauce (optional)

a couple of teaspoons of mixed dried herbs (thyme, oregano, rosemary, herbes de Provence are all nice)

1tsp cinnamon (absolutely not traditional but I like to add it for a slightly Middle Eastern flavour)

a tablespoon of chopped parsley and other fresh herbs

1 can chickpeas/garbanzo beans (absolutely not traditional but they bulk out the meat and again works well if you’re going for a Middle Eastern dimension)

Season the meat. Heat the vegetable oil (I use olive oil) in a large saute pan and brown off the meat.  Drain the meat with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add a little more oil and gently fry the onion, garlic, carrots and dried herbs until very soft.  You could also add chopped chilis or other finely chopped root vegetables at this stage.

Return the meat to the pan, dust with the flour and stir in the tomato puree if using (purists don’t like it, but I do) and any spices such as cinnamon or paprika. Cook, stirring constantly, for a few minutes. Slowly add the beef stock and any other liquid flavourings such as wine, Worcestershire sauce or mushroom ketchup.  Bring it to a simmer and cook for thirty to forty minutes until you have a thick, unctuous meat sauce.  About 10 minutes before you finish cooking the sauce add any cooked meat, cooked vegetables, and the can of chickpeas/garbanzo beans if using to warm through,

When the sauce is ready leave it to cool.

For the Topping

1 1/2 llbs mashing potatoes

salt, cream, butter, olive oil,  eggyolks etc. as desired

In the meantime boil, mash and season the potatoes and add butter, milk, cream, sour cream, egg yolks or olive oil to taste.  You could also add flavourings such as mashed roasted garlic, or horseradish, Just make sure the mash ends up being quite stiff and not too soft and creamy.

 

 

Pour the meat sauce into a deep oven-proof dish and top with the potato, being careful to cover all the meat sauce with at least 2 inches of topping.  It’s traditional to fork ridges into the potato to get a crunchy topping. Dot with a little butter. Some people top with grated cheese, but that seems like gilding the lily to me. Don’t let me stop you though.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees C/ 375 degrees F and bake in the oven for 25-35 minutes until golden brown on top. This dish is very forgiving of being left in the oven before a party, just make sure the topping doesn’t burn.

Serve with some sort of green vegetable or salad and enjoy experimenting!

Adventures In Baking – Panettone

 

 

Panettone – the rich fruited Italian Christmas bread - always reminds me of my mother. 

When I was little and Italian foodstuffs were not so easily available in the UK, a family friend who worked near Soho, then the heart of the Italian community in London, would always take a trip to one of the small Italian delis at Christmas and bring us a panettone for my mother’s Christmas treat.

Whenever I’ve spent Christmas with my Italian relatives, the table is always groaning with several different kinds of boxed panettone (and its richer, unfruited, cousin, pandoro).  Every Italian I’ve ever met has very definite opinions as to which brands are best and which are to be avoided.  My aunt sources hers from a small local bakery close to their home in Piemonte. 

I’ve never met anyone in Italy or elsewhere who has actually made one themselves though and it was only when I saw some paper panettone moulds in our local kitchen shop that I decided to give it a go.  I was a little worried that I might never be able to eat storebought again (as with mincemeat and Christmas pudding) but one just has to be courageous in these matters.

I used the recipe in the Macrina Bakery Cookbook as my starting point, which was enough to make two big loaves in standard paper panettone moulds. (The cookbook suggests making four loaves in small earthenware flowerpots, which is a nice, but seemingly unnecessary, conceit).

It’s a two-step process which takes some time, but it’s super fun baking.  I was doing this just before Christmas so didn’t have time to convert volume measures to weights for my UK readers. Just dig out the cup measures that have been sitting in the back of your utensil drawer.

The other major change I made was to replace some of the mixed candied peel with dried cranberries. If I say so myself this was a revelation and worked incredibly well. As for flavourings, I used the combination of citrus zest and vanilla given below. I used my homemade vanilla extract – of which more in another blog post – which is essentially vanilla steeped in white rum so you may want to add a tablespoon or two of rum if you’re using commercial vanilla.  You may also want to experiment with using lemon oil, orange flower water or fiori di sicilia, all of which can be used in Italian panettone recipes.  Whatever you use, the distinctive authentic taste comes from a combination of citrus and vanilla in some form.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE STARTER DOUGH

12 tbsps (1.5 sticks or 6oz) unsalted butter at room temperature

3/4 cup warm water

2 tbsps dried yeast (I used one sachet)

1/3 cup granulated sugar

3 eggs

2 tbsps freshly grated orange zest

1.5 tbsps freshly grated lemon zest

3 tbsps honey

1 tbsp pure vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose (plain) flour

 

PREPARING THE STARTER DOUGH

Cut the butter into small pieces and set aside.

Combine the warm water, yeast and sugar in a large bowl (I used my stand mixer) and whisk to dissolve yeast.  Let sit for five minutes so the yeast can bloom.

Add the butter, eggs, orange and lemon zest, honey, vanilla and flour. Mix on low speed to bring the ingredients together using the dough hook attachment.  Increase speed to medium and mix for around 6 minutes.  Transfer the dough to an oiled medium bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Let it sit in a warm room until almost doubled in size.

 

 

INGREDIENTS FOR THE FINAL DOUGH

1 1/2 cups golden raisins (sultanas)

3 sticks (12 oz) unsalted butter at room temperature

3 eggs

3 egg yolks

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

2 tsps salt

4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose (plain flour)

1 1/2 cups total dried fruits.  I used a mixture of dried cranberries and and candied orange and lemon peel. I would imagine that dried sour cherries would also be good.  But it would be fun to experiment here.

 

PREPARING THE FINAL DOUGH

While the starter dough is proving, place the raisins/sultanas in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave them for around 20 minutes to plump them up and then drain thoroughly.

Cut butter in small pieces and set aside.

Punch down the starter dough with floured hands

Whisk together eggs, yolks and sugar in a bowl (I used my stand mixer) until thick. Add the starter dough, salt and flour. Using the dough hook attachment, knead on a low speed for 2-3 minutes.  Increase the speed to medium and keep adding the butter piece by piece.  This should take another 3-4 minutes. Mix on medium speed for another 10-12 minutes until the dough has a satiny finish and stretches easily. Let the dough rest in the bowl for 5 minutes to relax the gluten.

Add the soaked raisins and mixed dried fruit to the bowl and mix into the dough at low speed. Transfer the finished dough to an oiled medium bowl and cover again with a damp tea towel.  Let sit in a warm room until doubled size – 3-4 hours.

Oil two paper moulds and divide the dough between them.  Leave to rise one final time until the dough rises above the top of the papers.

 

 

Position an oven rack so that is it close to the bottom of the oven. Preheat oven to 335 degrees Fahrenheit/ 170 degrees Celsius.

Brush the panettone with eggwash then place on a baking sheet in the oven. Bake for around 90 minutes or until deep golden brown on top.

Here is my baby baking in the oven  - it’s amazing what you can do with an iPhone nowadays. 

 

 

I was doing all this while rushing around packing to go to Whistler at Christmas and decided to experiment by leaving the second panettone to do its final rise in the fridge while we were away.  These lovelies had the most delicious flavour and a soft though robust texture, somewhat like a chewy brioche; and, though not as light and airy as the store bought ones, were in fact very similar to the ones made by the artisanal baker my aunt buys from in Italy.

 

 

The real revelation though, came with the loaf we left in the fridge for five days.  The long slow rising gave the loaf an indescribably complexity of both texture and flavour, noticeably more interesting than the one which had been baked immediated (and that was pretty darn good).

I’m going to be experimenting more with slow rising in future.  And yes, unfortunately panettone is something else I will never be able to buy from the store again.

Christmas Pudding

 

When we got back from Whistler we tucked into the Christmas puddings which had been gently maturing since November.

It was my first time making Christmas puddings, so I was somewhat nervous as to what they would taste like, but I shouldn’t have worried. They were delectable – moist and boozy with dark marmalade-y depths - and, like mincemeat, I will never go back to buying them again. Thank you America for your ridiculous ban on importing beef suet products, which has made me stretch my cooking horizons.

We shared the first one at a small family dinner. Here she is in all her moist and sticky splendour. I had to send the Husband out in the rain to get the traditional sprig of holly, so couldn’t be too particular when he came back with a sprig without berries.

 

 

And here it is anointed with warmed and flaming brandy in the traditional way.

 

 

The Minx was mesmerised.

 

We shared pudding number two at a drinks party for friends on the second day of the new year. It was fun to see the kids and Americans all equally excited by the idea of setting dessert on fire. The actual taste of Christmas pudding is more of an acquired one though it seems.

Stir Up Sunday

 

A couple or three weekends back, while I was also in the throes of Thanksgiving baking, it was Stir Up Sunday and I also had to get going with my Christmas baking. 

 

 

The name apparently comes from the collect from the Book of Common Prayer which begins ‘Stir up, we beseech you O Lord’. This was said in Anglican churches on the last Sunday before Advent and reminded cooks and bakers throughout the land that they should be making a start on their mincemeat and Christmas puddings, so that they would have time to mature before the Christmas festivities.

It’s a good job the Puritans objected to Christmas puddings and so never really brought them to America as I have to say the combination of Stir Up Sunday and Thanksgiving is enough to drive anyone to drink.

After the success of my mincemeat last year, and since the wonderful RainShadow Meats in Seattle is now rendering beef suet, I decided to make Christmas puddings for the first time as well as the mincemeat.  After reading through several recipes I decided to stick with dear old Delia and make some minor tweaks.

Her detailed recipe is here. Tweaks I made included adding substituting some glace’ cherries for half of the mixed peel and replacing the orange juice and zest with a spoonful of the Husband’s fabulous homemade Three Fruit Marmalade as suggested by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

 

As is traditional we also added some foil-wrapped coins to the mixture, to be found when we cut into the puddings – and yes, I really ought to get myself a more photogenic mixing bowl.

Since this is mostly a mix of dried fruits, beef suet, breadcrumbs, spices, beer and brandy, the puddings look surprisingly pale and anaemic before being steamed.

 

 

The Husband, being an engineer, was then commandeered into covering the puddings with a double layer of greaseproof paper, covering them with tinfoil and manufacturing string handles for them, so they could be lifted in and out of the steam bath.

 

 

The Internet then informed me that Christmas pudding can be steamed in the slow cooker, a Christmas miracle indeed.  No more having to keep an eye on the pudding and making sure they don’t steam dry.

The larger one was steamed in the slow cooker for around 10 hours on HIGH and the smaller steamed overnight or for around 8 hours.

I don’t know what the alchemical process is that makes them come out all dark and moist and sticky at the end, but they sure looked good and smelled unbelievable.

 

 

The Husband then re-wrapped them so they could be steamed again at Christmas and now they sit ‘maturing’ in my cool closet, and delighting my heart every time I walk in there and glance at them.

I shall report back.

Here’s this year’s batch of mincemeat.  I’ve already used a jar to make mince pies and can report that it is very delicious indeed.

Adventures in Baking – Maple Pecan Pumpkin Pie

 

Apparently it takes a village to make a pumpkin pie.  Not a literal village you understand - who’s got one of those nowadays? – but an online village. 

 

 

Having never made a pumpkin pie before; indeed having spent the vast majority of my life thinking that putting pumpkin in a PIE, instead of say, soup or ravioli, was a vaguely barbaric act;  I put out pleas on here, on Facebook and on Twitter for pie-making advice.

 

TOP TIP #1 – USE CANNED PUMPKIN

This was not entirely helpful.  As I mentioned, I mostly wanted to make a pumpkin pie because the Minx and I had managed to grow two little pumpkins in our vegetable garden this summer.  However, convinced by the many, many comments I received, I did buy an emergency can of pumpkin just in case.

Which was fortunate, as when we halved, deseeded and roasted the homegrown pumpkins, we found them to be extremely anaemic and tasteless. One up for the online village.

 

TOP TIP #2- USE THE MACRINA COOKBOOK’S MAPLE PECAN PUMPKIN PIE RECIPE

I received a lot of recipe suggestions but one that struck home was to use the one from the Macrina bakery cookbook. This sounded good because a) I actually have the book b) the recipes I’ve cooked from it before have been excellent and c) it included maple syrup in the pumpkin custard and a topping of pecans and maple syrup.  Since I don’t actually much like pumpkin pie, these sounded like good additions to me.  Here’s a link to a pdf of the recipe.

 

TOP TIP #3- BLEND THE PUMPKIN VICIOUSLY

The Macrina recipe uses canned pumpkin and roasted fresh butternut squash (which we always have in the freezer to make risotto) which are both comparatively smooth.  Nevertheless a few minutes attacking them with the immersion blender made them even smoother and creamier. Definitely a good thing to do whatever type of pumpkin or squash you’re using.

 

TOP TIP #4- USE COCONUT MILK IN THE CUSTARD

Another person to send me her recipe was Seattle pie queen Kate McDermott.  Her recipe is for a more traditional pumpkin pie, though it had one intriguing ingredient – lite coconut milk instead of cream or condensed milk.  I used it instead of the buttermilk in the Macrina recipe and Kate is right, the texture and flavour are exceptional,   I did of course also use Kate’s superlative pie crust recipe.

TOP TIP #5 – USE GINGER SYRUP INSTEAD OF FRESH OR GROUND GINGER

This top tip was invented by me! And I think it’s a good one.  Stem ginger, or preserved ginger in syrup, is a very traditional British preserve, which I managed to get on Amazon. The ginger pieces are preserved in a tangy ginger syrup and instead of freshly, grated ginger I added a little ginger syrup to the pumpkin custard and the maple pecan topping.  I’ve since seen that in the US you can also buy a delicious-looking ginger syrup here (with great packaging) which might also work.

This pie turned out incredibly well, and was wolfed down by pumpkin pie traditionalists AND pumpkin pie disparagers alike.  Thanks to everyone in my lovely online community who contributed the tips that made it possible.

I see that November has been and gone, and I’ve got nowhere close to posting every day. Oh well.  Might try for December, though posting over Christmas could be a little light (and possibly drunken)..

Adventures in Baking – Torta alla Gianduia with Pears

 

Keep reading, I’m hosting a giveaway at the end of this blog post…

 

Following on from my astonishing third place triumph in the Queen Anne Farmers' Market Pie Competition almost exactly a year ago, I thought it was about time I entered another baking competition, this time Edible Seattle’s Cake v Pie Competition. Since I am an equal opportunity baker and like baking and eating both pies and cakes, I decided this time that I would play on Team Cake.

 

My cake and its competition (Photo by Myra Kohn)

The only catch was the theme - ‘Trouble in Pearadise’ or pies and cakes featuring pears. Making a pear pie or tart is easy peasy lemon squeezy but there aren’t so many pear-y cakes out there.  I started to think about what flavours go with pears – chocolate, of course, and all kinds of nuts, and hit upon the idea of incorporating pears into a torta alla gianduia, the traditional chocolate and hazelnut cake of Piemonte, my mother’s home region in Italy.

Gianduia has a long and illustrious history in Piemonte, where expensive chocolate was stretched with the addition of hazelnut paste, from the hazelnut trees which grown in abundance in the region.  It’s one of the most famous flavours in the world today, as Nutella, from Ferrero, a great Piemontese company, is just a commercial form of gianduia paste.

The climates of Piemonte and the Pacific North West are not dissimilar and I was delighted to discover that hazelnuts grow well in the PNW too, most famously in Oregon. So this cake would be both delightfully seasonal and local.

This cake is a little complicated, but you’ll end up with a dense, fudgey, chocolatey, delight, which perfectly complements the sweetness and delicacy of juicy pears. But don’t just take my word for it. 

 

Step 1 – Poaching the Pears

I found David Liebovitz’s guidelines on poaching pears here to be super useful.

Ingredients

4-5 firm ripe pears (I used some lovely Bartlett pears from my organic box)
1 litre/1 quart water
1 1/3 cups (250g) sugar
1 miniature bottle Frangelico (Italian hazelnut liqueur or another liqueur to taste)

Peel, core and quarter the pears. Heat the water and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved. Add the pears and cover them with a circle of parchment or greaseproof paper with a small hole cut in the middle.  This ensures that the pears don’t float up from the liquid and turn brown. Simmer gently for 10-15 minutes making sure the pears don’t turn mushy. Remove the pears and boil the peary liquid down fiercely until you have a thick syrup. Turn off the heat, pour in the bottle of Frangelico, add back the pears and set aside to cool.

Step 2 – Making the Cake

This recipe is based on this one here by Annamaria Volpi, with a few tweaks.

Ingredients

1½ cups (180 gr) ground hazelnuts (you could substitute other nuts such as almonds or pistachios)
7 oz (200 gr) semi or bittersweet chocolate, finely diced (I used Guittard 72% cacao)
4 + 4 oz (115 + 115 gr) sugar
7 oz (200 gr) butter, at room temperature
8 eggs, separated
¾ cup (110 gr) plain or cake flour

Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C).  Oil a 9 inch (23cm) Springform cake tin and line it with parchment paper.  Sprinkle the paper with cocoa powder. I wanted to make a three-layer cake. You could bake yours in a 10 inch (25cm) pan and just cut it in half for two layers instead.

Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie or glass bowl set on a saucepan of simmering water.

Cream the ground hazelnuts, 4oz (115g) of sugar and the butter together until soft and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and mix together until smooth. Combine the egg yolks one at a time with the hazelnut-chocolate mixture, reserving the egg whites.  Sift the flour and stir it in thoroughly.

Beat the egg whites. When they are half beaten add the remaining 4 oz (115 gr) of sugar and beat until stiff peaks are formed.

Fold the egg whites carefully into the hazelnut-chocolate mixture. Pour the mixture into the cake tin, level with a spatula and bake it for approximately 30–40 minutes (for a 10 inch cake) or 50 minutes for a 9 inch cake. The cake is ready when a stick of spaghetti poked into the centre comes out clean and dry.

Remove from the oven and let the cake cool at room temperature. Then remove from the cake pan.  When it is fully cooled, slice into two or three layers.

 

 

Step 3 – Making the Chocolate Ganache Filling and Topping and Assembling the Cake

Ingredients

1 cup (250 cc) double (heavy) cream
12 oz (340 gr) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, diced
2 oz (60 gr) butter, at room temperature

Pour the cream into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat over a medium heat until just starting to bubble. Add the diced chocolate and beat together until the chocolate has fully melted into the hot cream. Beat in the butter. Leave to cool at room temperature for 2 hours. I hurried mine along in the fridge which is fine, but make sure it doesn’t get too cold and stiff.

Take your cake layers and spoon a few tablespoons of the peary poaching syrup over the cakes. Wait for it to soak in.  Spread the bottom two layers with chocolate ganache and then top with sliced poached pears. Assemble the cake and spread the remaining ganache all over the top and sides.  Put the cake in the fridge so that the ganache sets firmly.

Step 4 – Glazing and Decorating the Cake

You only need to do this step if you’re feeling fancy, though I’m glad I did.  The first ganache layer (step 3) will produce a perfectly delicious cake. This is what you need to do if you want to create a smooth, shiny finish, say for example if you’re entering a cake competition.

Ingredients

¾ cup (180 cc) double (heavy) cream
6 oz (180 gr ) dark, bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, diced

Pour the cream into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat over a medium heat until just starting to bubble. Add the diced chocolate and beat together until the chocolate has fully melted into the hot cream and the ganache is very light and soft.  Immediately spread the glaze over the refrigerated cake with an offset spatula.

In Italy it is traditional for some reason to write the word ‘Gianduia’ on the cake in script.  So I melted a little white chocolate and piped it on.

Here is my cake basking in the sunshine.

 

Here’s a glimpse of its fudgey insides.

 

 

And here I am after my cake won second prize! Told you it was a good recipe.

 

Photo courtesy of Myra Kohn

My prize was a year’s subscription to Edible Seattle – a monthly magazine focusing on the fabulous food bounty of Seattle and its surrounding area, and the farmers and chefs who bring it to us. The only problem is that I’m already a subscriber. So I have a subscription here to give away.  It would obviously be most relevant to a blog reader from the Seattle area, but it’s so full of great recipes and fascinating articles that I’d encourage anyone interested in food to enter.

If you’d like to enter the giveaway, please leave a comment below telling us what is your favourite autumn ingredient. I’ll draw the winner at random on Friday 11th November. Good luck!

Adventures in Cooking – Rosehip Syrup

 

Do you have a favourite foodstuff you remember from childhood that is no longer available but that you’d love to magically taste again?

 

 

For me that foodstuff was something you may not even have heard of – rosehip syrup.  During the war citrus fruits were extremely scarce in the UK and a cottage industry grew up picking homegrown rosehips and preserving them as syrup, as they are apparently astonishingly high in vitamin C and packed with antioxidants.

Even into the 70s rosehip syrup was available at the ‘chemists’ and we always had a bottle in the house, either drinking it diluted as a cordial or eating it spooned neat over tinned rice pudding or stirred into ice cream.  Because, you see, even though it was born out of austerity, rosehip syrup is extremely very delicious indeed.  Imagine a complex but delicate sugar syrup redolent with tastes of tangerine and apple and perhaps the odd echo of something tropical, mango perhaps, in the background, and you’ll see where I’m coming from.  Unfortunately for me, the manufacturers Delrosa stopped selling rosehip syrup in the UK some time in the 70s, though it is apparently still available in some developing countries.

So it happened that I was out blackberrying in Seattle one day in September and came across a row of rosa rugosa bushes, complete with fat, juicy sunset-coloured hips. Would it be possible to recreate my childhood memories? I decided to pick some and find out.

 

 

It seems I’m not the only person trying to recreate their British childhood and if you search there are a number of recipes online. I decided to follow the instructions given in this blog as they seemed very thorough.

The process is, however, surprisingly easy.

I had around 1/2 lb of rosehips which I ground to a pulp in the food processor.  Did you know that rosehips are full to bursting with hundreds of tiny seeds?

 

 

The next step is to add the rosehip pulp to 3/4 pint of boiling water, turn off the heat and leave it to stand and infuse for 15 minutes. Filter the pulp through muslin or cheesecloth set in a sieve, until fully strained, about 10 minutes.   Take the pulp left in the muslin, place it back into the saucepan and this time add 1/2 pint of boiling water and repeat the whole process.  It’s important to make sure that the little itchy hairs which are apparently inside some rosehips (I didn’t see any in mine) don’t get into your final infusion.

 

 

When the infused liquid has fully filtered through, tip it back into the saucepan and reduce it down to half a pint.  Add 5 oz of sugar, boil it all up together until a syrup forms, about 5 minutes, and then pour your finished syrup into sterilised jars or bottles.

I served it to the Minx poured over Greek yogurt and fresh berries, or you could add it to sparkling wine to make an elegant cocktail, soak it into a rich, dense almondy cake, use it in place of maple syrup on pancakes or waffles or swirl it into ice cream or whipped cream.

 

 

Or you could do as I did.  Take a dessertspoonful, add some chilled sparkling water and travel thirty odd years back in time.

If you could, which foodstuff would you make magically reappear?  Have you ever tried to recreate it from scratch? Am I weird that I like eating roses?  Talk to me!

How the Dukan Diet Worked for Me

 

November 2009              (at around 175lbs)	November 2011                  (at around 144lbs)

 

Remember how I’ve tried to lose weight before on this blog? With very little success?

I’d been trucking along at around 175lbs for the previous couple of years and the arthritis pain in my knee was getting worse and worse.  So on June 1st this year I started yet another diet. This time a friend in the UK recommended a regime called the Dukan Diet, a French diet which had recently become very popular in the UK, as it was reportedly used by Carole Middleton (mother of Kate). 

The Dukan diet is sort of Atkins on steroids and has four phases.

First you ‘Attack’ which lasts for 3-7days (depending on how overweight you are) and where you eat NOTHING but lean protein (0% dairy, chicken, fish, eggs, seafood, lean beef etc.) and two tablespoons of oatbran to keep things moving.  This is HARD, does horrible things to your blood sugar and bowels and has I’m sure contributed to the diet’s reputation for unhealthiness.  However it was effective, I lost 6lbs in 5 days.

Then you ‘Cruise’, alternating 1 day of lean protein +oatbran with 1 day of lean protein + all the low carb vegetables you can eat +oatbran. And you’re supposed to do this until you reach your target weight. I’ve been cruising since June and have lost a total of 31lbs, with a 11lbs to go until I reach my target weight and a normal BMI. 

If and when you hit your target there are two more phases, ‘Consolidation’ and ‘Stabilization’ but I’ll talk about those when I get there.

I’m finding the diet comparatively easy as it doesn’t involved any weighing and measuring and counting, you’re allowed as much as you want of the permitted foods. Also, and interestingly, it seems that my tastes are changing, my carb cravings have gone right down, I feel nauseous if I eat too much fat and things like cakes and biscuits seem much too sweet (you’re allowed Splenda on the diet but that’s it).

I also feel really well in myself – my skin is good, I have loads of energy and the arthritis pain in my knee has GONE, which is incredible, as I was almost crippled with it back in April on our trip to San Diego.  I’ve also been upping the exercise, either doing a Jillian Michaels DVD every day or walking as the diet suggests, and doing lots of swimming over the summer. Nothing too crazy though.

Unfortunately recent weeks have been a struggle and it’s only going to get harder as we get closer to December, but I am DETERMINED to knock this on the head once and for all and get rid of those last 11lbs if it kills me.

Let me know if you’re interested in finding out more, and I’ll blog about some of my menus and stuff in the upcoming weeks.

In the meantime on the left is a picture I had taken in May 2010 wearing a sweater I’d just knitted and on the right, as I am today, wearing the same sweater.

 

I thought I might try NaBloPoMo, where I commit to posting every single day for a month,, as a way of getting back into blogging again.  Of course, I’m two days late even starting, so we’ll go to December 3rd. ‘K?

Things I Am Loving - Stripey Kenwood Stand Mixers

 

After the the Husband, the Minx and the wedding album, I do believe my Kitchen Aid stand mixer would be the next thing I’d rescue in a fire.

However, that’s not to say that I can’t still admire these Kenwood Stand Mixers from afar and be grateful that someone is having a little fun with kitchen design.

 

 

Would you have one in your kitchen?  Or am I just succumbing to my inner five year old again?

 

 The Firecracker colourway is also available from John Lewis. Unfortunately I don’t think Kenwood has arrived in the US. 

Adventures in Baking – The Best Chocolate Brownies in the World

 

I seem to have been making rather a lot of chocolate brownies this summer, which is strange as I’m not supposed to be eating them on this diet (though one or two might have accidentally fallen into my mouth on occasion).

 

 

They were my contribution  for the Food Bloggers Bake Sale and the Husband also requested some for his birthday, where I copied Nigella’s idea of piling the brownies up in lieu of a cake.

 

 

After extensive taste testing, I have found no better recipe than that for Chocolate and Sour Cherry Brownies from Unwrapped – Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes which is a fabulous and much underrated cookbook. (I can’t get Nigella’s brownies to be anything other than dry and cake-y)

These brownies have just the right gooey interior and firm, crusty, satisfying edges, while the cherries impart an extra chewy dimension. And the sultry dark chocolate and sweet, tangy cherries are of course a match made in heaven.

It’s not surprising they’re so good, since the ingredients are insane. If you’re on any sort of diet, I suggest you walk away from the computer now  and go get yourself a nice cup of cottage cheese.

 

Ingredients

300g (11oz) unsalted butter

300g (11oz) top quality dark chocolate

5 large eggs

450g (1lb) granulated sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract/essence

200g (7oz) plain (all purpose) flour

1 tsp salt

250g (9oz) dried cherries*

Extra chocolate chips for topping if you’re greedy like me

 *dried sour cherries are easily obtainable in the US but maybe not so easily in the UK, though I’ve definitely found them at Waitrose. However, I’ve successfully substituted dried cranberries and you could also use any other dried berries, nuts or just leave them out altogether. 

 

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 350 F. Line a 34x25cm / 13x10in rectangular baking tin with baking parchment.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bain-marie or heatproof bowl suspended over barely simmering water.

Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla until thick and creamy. Then beat the egg mixture into the melted chocolate.

Sift the flour and salt  together and stir into the mixture until smooth. Stir in the cherries.

Pour the liquid mixture into the baking tin and then bake for 25-35 minutes until the whole thing looks like a giant brownie with a slightly cracked surface.  When you start to smell them, it means they’re almost done. 

Try not to overcook the brownies.  If they seem too squidgy after you’ve taken them out, it’s not a problem to put them back in the oven for a few more minutes.  But if overcooked they get cake-y.

Just after you’ve brought the huge brownie out of the oven, sprinkle the whole thing with chocolate chips.  They will partially melt in the heat and slightly embed themselves into the mixture but then cool back down into chocolate chips again, imparting an extra chocolatey crunch to the surface of the already perfectly textured brownie. I got the idea from the brownies served at Pret a Manger, and it’s well worth the extra calories.

Leave the giant brownie to cool for about 20 minutes before cutting into large squares in the pan.

Blueberry Boy Bait

 

 

Speaking as we were about baking with kids, the Minx and I had very fun day for the last day of ‘mummy’ camp before starting school.

We went with friends for some pick your own blueberries (thanks Mercer Slough Blueberry Farm!) and then decided to do a spot of lunchbox baking afterwards.

The recipe for Blueberry Boy Bait from Smitten Kitchen seemed ideal lunchbox fare – easy to bake, easy to pack, not too sweet and packing enough blueberries that it could almost be counted as a healthy option. At least that’s what this mother tries to tell herself.  Oh and did I mention that they’re rather delicious?

First pick your blueberries.  I love how pretty they are.

 

 

Then mix up a plain-ish yellow cake batter (the full recipe is here) made with butter, a little soft brown sugar and half a cup of blueberries. The cake is then topped with more cinnamon-flavoured sugar and another half cup of blueberries so that the fruit is  evenly dispersed throughout the cake. This is an ideal job for small fingers.

 

 

You should end up with a golden rectangle of purple-flecked yumminess with a slightly crisp crust.  Cut it into small lunchbox-sized portions. Ours is now in a big ziploc bag in the freezer. Add a frozen slice to the lunchbox the night before and it will be fresh and ready to eat in time for lunch.

 

Incidentally the fabulous name was apparently bestowed by the fourteen year old girl who devised the recipe and came second in a baking competition back in the Fifties.  She was obviously a marketing as well as a baking genius. Mr T, the only boy in our family aside from Flora the cat, confirms that the name is appropriate even though it doesn’t contain either beer or bacon.

Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer

 

 

I set myself a low bar when it comes to mothering.  If the Minx grows up to have good manners, to love books and to be able to cook then I figure she’ll probably always have friends, be passably well-educated and never go hungry. And that way it seems to me happiness lies.

Certainly I can think of few greater pleasures in life than devouring a good book or some good food. So you can imagine how much I enjoyed reading Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer by Yarnstorm’s Jane Brocket, which discusses all the delectable foods found in classic children’s literature, accompanied by scrummy-looking recipes and pen and ink illustrations from the works in question.

The Minx and I are currently on a bit of an Enid Blyton jag at present and revelling in descriptions of fabulous picnics with boiled eggs and sticky buns, Aunt Fanny’s cakes and of course lashings of ginger beer (which according to Brocket, Enid Blyton never actually says in her books).

 

 

I am amused to note that, while the plot intricacies of many of these books have completely receded into the mists of time, I can remember almost verbatim many of the food descriptions, such as this one from What Katy Did.

“.. and there – oh, delightful surprise – were seven little pies – molasses pies, baked in saucers – each with a a brown top and crisp, candified edge, which tasted like toffee and lemon-peel, and all sorts of good things mixed up together. There was a a general shout… a tumult of joy… in an incredibly short time every vestige of pie had disappeared, and a blissful stickiness pervaded the party.”

Oh how I wanted to taste one of these pies – ‘molasses’ sounded so delicious and exotic to this little British girl – and now I can, because I have a recipe.

Unfortunately the book is already out of print and quite difficult to get hold of – I suspect the market for it was rather too esoteric. American readers might be particularly frustrated as it focuses primarily on British children’s classics and old-fashioned British baking, though Little Women, Little House on the Prairie and What Katy Did all make an appearance.

But buy this book if you, as I did, grew up with the likes of The Famous Five, My Naughty Little Sister, Pippi Longstocking, Milly Molly Mandy, Paddington Bear, Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, and Malory Towers. Get it doubly fast if you are re-reading these books with your kids and enjoy baking with them.

What do enjoy cooking and reading with your kids?  The Minx and I are sorely in need of recommendations in both categories.

Oh and speaking of the Minx, she went back to school yesterday, oh frabjous day! So now I’m back blogging properly.

Postcard from Orcas Island

Loveseat

Fancy Hotel of the Week – Melenos Lindos

 

Ha! You thought you’d got away with no more Greek holiday snaps. Unfortunately it remains my intention to bore you all into submission. After all, what else is a blog good for?

I mentioned that we liked to stay in little unassuming hotels while in Greece, but we decided to break that rule for the first few days by booking into the Melenos Lindos, high in the acropolis of the ancient town of Lindos in Rhodes. This hotel gets so many fabulous mentions, that it seemed churlish not to try it out.

Images from hotel website

Unfortunately they contacted us a few days before we left and said that there had been a double booking and they had no space for us.  They pulled out all the stops to secure alternative accommodation (which, thanks to its enormous swimming pool and spacious grounds was actually much more suitable for the Minx) and offered us a free dinner on their beautiful outdoor dining terrace.

Architect Anastasia Papaioanou and Australian artist-designer Donald Green worked together to recreate a traditional  multi-levelled, multi-terraced Lindian mansion, decorated in a timeless way using traditional local crafts and antiques.

Here are some of my photos from our dinner, supplemented by the couple above from the hotel’s website, as I didn’t have my wide-angled lens with me.

Enjoy the spectacularly pretty.

Beautiful British Food

 

Funnily enough, given that I was brought up by, and learned to cook from, an Italian woman and cook in a very Italian way myself, I have found myself being a bit of an unofficial ambassador for British food here in Seattle, where it’s as much maligned as it is everywhere else on the planet.

I tend to make classic British dishes for potlucks and gatherings (people are so surprised that British food can actually taste good) and really want the Minx to grow up understanding her culinary heritage in the land of mac 'n’ cheese and pumpkin pie.

New Zealander Joel Penkman moved to the UK and started painting beautifully detailed portraits of classic British foodstuffs which make me want to weep with nostalgia.

Every British kid grew up on these biscuits.

 

 

No trip to the seaside was complete without a stick of rock to take home.

 

 

My favourite ice lolly.  At least until they invented Magnums.

 

 

No kid’s birthday party was complete without Fondant Fancies, though my mum had enough of a fear of food colouring that we never had them at home.

 

 

Custard tarts.  Always hated those.

 

 

And pork pie. One of the top five things I miss most about the UK here in Seattle. I think I would cry if I had this picture on my kitchen wall.

 

 

Joel’s website is here. Buy her prints here.

The Story of the Cake - Part II

 

The day before the party the Husband and I set to work assembling all the various cakes I’d been making and freezing over the previous week.

 

 

The top tier was a classic Victoria sponge filled with chocolate buttercream. The rainbow cake filled with vanilla buttercream formed the middle tier and the bottom tier was yet another Macrina Bakery ‘Mom’s Chocolate Cake’, which I’ve been using for birthday cakes ever since the Minx was two, as it is very moist and forgiving, and much beloved by the grown up kids in attendance.

Stupidly I’d made my cakes in 9”, 8” and 7” sizes which didn’t really make for enough of a tiered effect and also left  nowhere for my fairy cake toppers to sit. Fortunately I’d made a big batch of cupcakes ready for a cupcake decorating activity at the party so we used a few to create plinths for the fairies to sit on.

Here is the whole edifice covered in its crumb coat. (Please ignore hideous green kitchen countertops).

 

 

And here is the finished article, covered with easy moulded flowers and chocolate bunnies, made using candy melts; vines and leaves iced on in green buttercream and a set of five Disney Fairy cake toppers. The Husband has asked me to point out that he is the person who actually wields the icing bag (under my direction) and he certainly did a fabulous job.

 

 

I was however nervous for the final piece de resistance.  Would the central rainbow cake be sufficiently lurid and rainbow-like?

It seems I needn’t have worried.

 

 

And the kids ADORED it.

 

 

I am indebted to my father-in-law for the last two photos. Note the careful styling in this bottom pic, it took me ages to get the mustard bottle just so.

The Story of the Cake - Part I

 

Yes, it’s that time of year again, where I get to make my daughter a crazy cake for her birthday. 

Actually it’s a different time of year this time round, as we couldn’t actually get our backsides in gear to organise a winter birthday party for her, so this year we’re celebrating her half birthday. And she gets a summer party and her grandad gets to spend it with her, so it’s all good.

But I digress. This year a Tinkerbell cake has been requested and I thought I’d go along the lines of the Nemo cake I made a couple of years back – three tiers, green icing and then an assortment of fairies and flowers rather than fish and shells.

I wanted to add an additional surprise though and make the middle tier a ‘rainbow’ cake, as has been demonstrated all over the internet.  Yes, it’s going to be ridiculously tasteless and OTT, but if you can’t get outrageous for a six year old’s birthday cake then when can you.

So I set to work.  A friend of mine in the UK, who has made a beautiful version, had success using a classic Victoria sponge recipe so that’s what I used.  I doubled it (8oz butter/sugar/flour + 4 eggs), weighed the mixture, divided it equally by six (the indigo layer seems to get missed out of these cakes) and worked out I had about 150g per cake to play with.

And then I set to work with my paste food colourings, as you can see above.  I ended up with some thin but still springy sponge cakes as a I wanted, so that I’ll end up with a not too steep middle tier. Here’s hoping that the more subdued colours of the outside of the cakes end up looking suitably garish when we cut into it.

More cake madness to follow.

Fancy Hotel of the Week - L’Auberge Del Mar

 

We wanted to go to Southern California this year to a) escape the miserable Seattle ‘spring’ (I use this term loosely) b) visit my elderly aunt in Dana Point, an hour or so’s drive south of LA and c) take the Minx to Disneyland.

I was told by friends on Twitter and Facebook that Del Mar was fun and it was suggested that we try the newly-refurbished L’Auberge Del Mar. When we discovered that my very favourite discounted fancy hotels travel site www.luxurylink.com was offering a deal, our fate was sealed.

And we had the most wonderful time.

L’Auberge Del Mar is a historic hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean and right on Del Mar’s attractive main street.

The hotel was completely refurbished in 2008 by interior designer Barclay Butera who has done a great job bringing a historic building bang up to date.

We were lucky enough to have a room overlooking the main courtyard of the hotel, which was been designed as a series of little ‘rooms’, cabanas, terraces and courtyards centered around the small but luxurious pool and jacuzzi area. There’s the kicking Bleu Bar, a scenic terrace for breakfast and informal suppers, cosy hidden cabanas and even space for weddings, all with an ocean view.

 

The themes of the décor are soft and muted sage-y greens, brown and white stripes and the most breathtakingly lush white planting – white roses everywhere you turn, undulating seas of fragrant jasmine, and hedges of rosemary and box.  

To be perfectly honest we hardly left the hotel all week.  The place comes into its own at night, when the surfers come in from the beach and le tout Del Mar comes out to party. We dined one evening in the hotel’s top notch restaurant Kitchen 1540, where the cured meats, golden beet salad and frozen key lime pie will live on in my memory. We drank superlative cocktails at the Bleu Bar every night. The hotel is beautifully lit with fires and burners everywhere to take the chill off the evening air as the sun sets over the ocean.

The internal décor is luxurious too – all sage greens, soft browns, seashells and comfy seating.  I loved the ridiculously rococo shell-encrusted side tables, the beautiful mother-of-pearl smothered lamps, the green toile cushions and the enormous shell planters full of orchids.

There were little touches of wit and humour everywhere – the wait staff had foodie quotations printed on their tee-shirts and Sofie, Kristy the Marketing Coordinator’s pretty little dog, had a sign at the front desk telling us when she was ‘working’ and available for cuddles. 

 

 

Finally, and most importantly for us, L’Auberge trod that extremely fine line between being super relaxed and kid-friendly (with unbelievably kind staff and a great kids’ menu) and sophisticated and happening enough for grown-ups – thanks to a fabulous bar, gorgeous spa and secluded lap pool. The Minx adored it and the Husband and I are longing to return.

Truly I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

Prince William’s Chocolate Biscuit Cake

 

When planning our Royal Wedding-watching midnight feast, I decided to try my hand at  the Chocolate Biscuit Cake which Prince William had requested be served at the wedding.  I vaguely remembered having ‘Chocolate Fridge Cake’ myself as a child and thought that the Minx might like it.

 

 

I can now see where Prince William is coming from. This ‘cake’ is obscenely decadent and utterly scrumptious and also very quick and easy to make (though I imagine that the enormous version served at the wedding itself took a bit more time).

I based my version loosely on the recipe given by the Tea & Sympathy tearoom in New York and several British versions.  The great thing about this cake is that, since it’s a ‘no bake’ cake – it just sets hard in the fridge – you can be very approximate with quantities and it will still turn out successfully.

The trickiest part for peeps not in the UK will be sourcing the correct biscuits (yes, biscuits in this case means ‘cookies’ and not the soft billowy scone-like things you eat for breakfast).  The traditional English biscuit of choice would be McVities Digestives or Rich Teas – hard, plain, crumbly biscuits which are not too sweet and and a tad salty. They provide a nice contrast to the rest of the cake which is so sweet and rich.  I can find McVities biscuits in the British food section at Metropolitan Market in Seattle and all the online British food stores also carry them, so they are available in the US if you look. The nearest American equivalent is the Graham cracker but they’re not quite the same.  You could also experiment with some of the plain French cookies which are quite easily available (LU do good ones) or use a plain packet shortbread. Remember, nothing too rich, too sweet, or too fancy.

Golden syrup may also be a challenge for people outside the US. I discuss it at length here. Honey, maple syrup or corn syrup could be substituted at a pinch though your cake will taste different. Or else replace the cream and golden syrup with 14 fl oz (400 ml) of sweetened condensed milk.

Finally dried sour cherries are an inspired addition by moi, if I say so myself. The sour, chewy sweetness adds a whole new dimension to the soft cream unctuousness of the chocolate and the crunchiness of the biscuits. I would imagine that dried cranberries would have a similar effect, and raisins would do at a pinch.

 

 

Ingredients

Cake

1 sleeve (about 8-10 oz) McVities Rich Tea or Digestive biscuits, Graham crackers, or similar.  I used Digestives.

10oz (300g) good chocolate. I used Green & Blacks, two bars of dark and two bars of milk since I had the Minx in mind. More sophisticated chocolate lovers may prefer to use all dark chocolate.

1/2 cup/200g/4oz butter

10 fl oz/300 ml heavy/double cream

4 fl oz / 100 ml/ 4 tbsp golden syrup (see above)

A couple of large handfuls of dried sour cherries/cranberries/raisins (optional)

Topping

4 oz (100g) good chocolate (see above)

1 tbsp heavy/double cream

 

Method

Line a loaf tin with butter and parchment paper

Crumble the cookies into small roughly almond-sized bits.

Set up a bain marie or a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, break up the chocolate into bits and melt it in the bowl, together with the butter, cream and syrup.

When everything is fully melted together, stir in the crumbled biscuits and dried fruit if using until everything is fully coated with chocolate.  Pour it into the loaf tin and smooth the top with a wooden spoon. Chill in the fridge for around 4 hours.

When the cake is fully chilled, melt the remaining chocolate and 1tbsp of cream or milk together to make a ganache. Turn out the cake and spread the ganache over the top and sides, filling in an gaps, lumps an bumps.

Serve in small pieces. A little truly does go a long way, though the Minx (who ADORED this cake) might not fully agree.

 

Here’s a picture of the cake served at the Royal Wedding at Prince William’s request and made by McVities. They apparently used 35lbs of chocolate and approximately 1,700 Rich Tea biscuits. 

Royal Wedding Souvenirs – Food

 

So I’ve been collecting links like crazy and am going to be boring you silly this week with a veritable parade of Royal Wedding memorabilia.  First up is food to get you in the mood for the big day.

UK biscuit (cookie) bakers the Biscuiteers, have come up with a delightful Special Edition tin of biscuits, featuring crowns, glass coaches, tiered wedding cakes, flags, shoes, engagement rings, dresses and cathedrals. I would SO be buying this if I lived in the UK.

 

 

 

 

Brighton-based cake designers Choccywoccydoodah produced this incredible take on their signature wedding cake to celebrate the event.

 

 

Nottingham-based Castle Rock Brewery has created a special beer aptly called Kiss Me Kate for the occasion.

 

 

German-based Donkey Products has created a lovely pair of KaTEA and William teabags, showing Kate in her wedding dress wearing an enormous sapphire and wallowing in oodles of cash.

Poor girl has however got some very formidable inlaws to contend with though.

Finally, for those of Stateside who also want wedding cookies then Eleni’s has also created a wedding cookie assortment featuring British icons, tiaras, engagement rings, horses and the bride and groom themselves.

 

 

 

Or instead of commemorative china, you can buy cookies in the shape of commemorative plates, which seems to me to be much the best option. Also available from Eleni’s.

 

 

More Royal Wedding stuff later this week.

Recipe of the Week – Scones and Clotted Cream

 

I think we’ve talked about his before, but American dairy products are different.  Butter is less rich, and the creams have less fat content and, to my great chagrin, thick spoonable, dollop-able creams (I adore the word ‘dollop’) just don’t exist. And nor does clotted cream.

 

 

This thick spreadable 55% fat cream is even quite difficult to find in London – it’s a speciality of England’s West Country, and should ideally be consumed in a little teashop somewhere in either Devon or Cornwall at a table heaving with flimsy bits of chintzy china and mismatching embroidered napkins.

I haven’t been able to track it down at all in the US, but last month on our trip to Vancouver, I was thrilled to see it offered as part of the afternoon tea at the Shangri-La, and even more thrilled to be given some as a gift by Stéphane, the world’s loveliest concierge. This month, the wonderful Viv made a return trip to the Shangri-La and came back bearing more clotted cream from Stéphane. Truly I am lucky in my friends.

 

 

Clotted cream should be eaten with freshly made, billowy soft, barely sweet scones. It’s taken me a long time to track down a decent scone recipe but this one from the BBC website is really good. It uses buttermilk, which is slightly unusual,  but gives the scones a delightful airiness and slight bite.

Ingredients

225g (1 2/3 cups) self-raising flour (if you can’t get self raising make your own by adding 1tsp of baking powder to 1 cup of flour).

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda/baking soda

1 pinch of salt

50g (3.5 tbsp) chilled butter

25g (1tbsp) caster or baker’s sugar

2 handfuls sultanas (golden raisins) optional

125ml (1/2 cup) buttermilk

4 tbsps milk

A little extra flour for rolling and dusting

Preheat the oven to 220C/450F/Gas Mark 7. Butter a baking sheet.

Take a big mixing bowl and add the flour, baking soda, salt and butter. Chop at the butter roughly with kitchen scissors or a knife, and then rub it into the flour. Aim for a reasonably fine crumb but don’t rub it in too much or the scones will be dry.  Remember to lift your hands high in the air while you’re doing this to aerate the mixture.

Stir in the sugar.  I added two handfuls of golden raisins (sultanas) at this stage. They’re entirely optional or else you could also use normal raisins or currants.  Don’t use too many or you’ll weigh the mixture down.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mix and pour in nearly all of the buttermilk and milk. Stir the mix with a spatula until the milk is absorbed and then bring it all together with your hands. The dough should be very soft, almost sticky. Use the last remaining buttermilk and milk to bring together all the flaky bits at the bottom of the bowl if necessary.  Use a light touch at this stage.

Dump the dough on a lightly floured work service. Knead just enough to get rid of any cracks and then pat it down gently until it’s a least an inch (2.5cm) thick.  Take a round cutter – the size is up to you, I tend to make mini ones, and cut out your scones. The cutter makes a delightful sighing sound as it pushes through the dough. Gather up the trimmings,  pat together again and cut again until all your dough is used up. You should have enough for around 5-6 large scones or 10 mini ones.

Here are my little honey bunches excitedly waiting to go into the oven.

 

 

Dust with flour and bake in the oven for around 10-12 minutes until risen and golden.  Cool on a wire rack.

Serve as soon after baking as possible with jam and a generous dollop of clotted cream.  Strawberry jam is traditional but I used the very last of last year’s cherry jam from our tree and they were incredibly delicious

I always serve mine the Cornish way with the cream on top. Apparently Devonians put the cream first and then the jam. This is supposedly the subject of much fierce debate in the West Country.

My awesome red spotty teapot is from Rosanna Inc (which I didn’t know was a Seattle-based company) via discount site RueLala. If you still haven’t signed up for lots of lovely bargains, here’s an invitation.

They Draw And Cook

 

As you know, I aspire – with varying degrees of success – to do a little food photography. To my mind recipes just aren’t complete without pictures.

On They Draw And Cook  Nate Padavick and Salli Swindell. a brother and sister team, together with sundry other wonderfully talented artists, have put together the web’s biggest collection of illustrated recipes. Aren’t these exquisite? Looks like there are some great recipes too.

Photography suddenly seems very passé.

 

{via Helen at Countryside Wedding}

Recipe of the Week – Pear and Almond Tart

 

 

The clocks may have gone forward this weekend but if my organic veggie box is anything to go by, we’re still in the depths of winter here in the Pacific Northwest.  Fortunately, in among the kale and spinach and chard and collard greens, there are usually a few delicious pears to be found, so I’ve been making a lot of my very favourite Pear & Almond Tart from the River Café Cook Book.

The River Café is one of London’s most celebrated (and much missed by me) Italian restaurants and the eponymous cookbooks I have by chefs Ruth Rogers and the late much lamented Rose Gray are among the most dog-eared and stained in my vast collection.

The emphasis on fresh seasonal ingredients rather than fancy cooking techniques means that most of the recipes are highly accessible to the home cook, especially if you’re prepared to fiddle with the quantities, as most recipes are restaurant-sized.

 

 

 

Pear & Almond Tart

     

Ingredients*

 

FOR THE SWEET PASTRY

175g/6oz/1.5 cups plain (all-purpose) flour

A pinch of salt

90g/4oz/ 1 stick unsalted butter, cold from the fridge and cubed

50g/2oz/0.5 cups icing (powdered) sugar

1 whole egg

*I have halved the quantities given in the book to make a smaller tart, plenty big enough for 6-8 servings.  If you wish, double the quantities and use a 30cm (12 inch) loose-bottomed flan tin to make enough for at least 12 greedy people.

 

 

Whizz up the flour, salt, butter and sugar in a food processor until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the egg and whizz again. The mixture will immediately combine and leave the sides of the bowl. Remove the dough, pat it into a ball, wrap with cling film (Saran wrap) and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

When it’s firm and chilled, grate the pastry into a 9in (23cm) fluted loose-bottomed fluted flan tin and then press it evenly round the sides and bottom. (I have no idea why you need to grate it rather than just press it in in lumps, but I always follow blindly follow instructions).  It’s fine to handle this pastry as much as you want.

Line the pastry case with greaseproof or parchment paper and fill with baking beans. Bake blind at 180 degrees C/ 350 degrees F/ Gas Mark 4 until light golden brown, about 25 minutes. I forgot to line with paper for this session which accounts for the curious pitted nature of the pastry case above.

 

FOR THE FRANGIPANE FILLING

3 beautifully ripe pears

175g/6oz/1.5 sticks butter

175g/6oz/0.75 cups caster (baker’s) sugar

175g/6oz/1 cup ground almonds (almond meal)

1 egg + 1 egg yolk

 

Cut your pears into large chunks and lay on the pastry shell. You could also halve or quarter the pears lengthwise and fan them out in wheel.  Some people poach the pears in syrup, but if you have fragrant, juicy ripe pears then you don’t need to bother. And if you don’t, go make something else.

Cream the butter and sugar until the mixture is pale and light. Add the almonds and eggs. Spoon the frangipane over the pears and spread so that the pears are covered and the case is filled to the edges.

Bake at 150 degrees C/300 degrees F/ Gas Mark 3 until golden brown and firm to the touch. The recipe says this should take 40 minutes, but it always takes over an hour in my oven.

 

 

Serve on its own or with a little crème fraiche and refuse resolutely to consider how much butter you’re consuming. Pears and almonds are health foods, right?

Beefcakes & Doilies

 

Uncle Beefy, as well as being one of the best bloggers on the Interwebulator, also makes the most incredible  cupcakes I’ve ever tasted anywhere. 

 

 

His cakes are perfection in a mouthful – not remotely dry and with a satisfying crumb that is neither too stodgy nor disappointingly ethereal.  Each is topped with the precisely the right amount of not-too-sweet frosting, exploding with fresh authentic flavours.  I truly have never had a better cupcake, my own sadly included.

 

 

And they are oh so pretty. On Sunday he gave me one box of lemon cupcakes with fresh strawberry frosting and another box of chocolate chip cakes with a creamy caramel frosting, which was brushed with golden lustre dust, and the same champagne colour as extremely expensive satin underwear.

 

 

Unless we can persuade Monsieur LeBoeuf  to open a worldwide mail order business, you may never get to taste these beauties, but I though you might at least want to look and drool.

The beautiful linen tablemat is from Soraam on Etsy.  I met its creator Soojin Yum at a recent Seattle foodie event. Her gorgeous linens are all handprinted using water-based inks on natural materials and come in lots of beautiful designs. Well worth checking out.

Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival

 

So the week before last I headed up to Vancouver BC with three friends – Viv from Seattle Bon Vivant, Tracy from AlDente and Mari  -  to attend the first ever Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival.

 

 

This was, of course, just an excuse, for four greedy women to spend 36 hours eating their way round Vancouver, ably abetted by Stephane Mouttet, the charming and hugely knowledgeable concierge at the Shangri La hotel.

Having had such an enjoyable time when we stayed there last, I recommended the Shangri La to the others and it was such a relief when our stay was even better than I had remembered.  If there are friendlier, more helpful, more informative hotel staff anywhere in the world, I’d love to meet them.

Our first stop on the Hot Chocolate Tour was Thomas Haas in Kitsilano. Haas has world-level patissier credentials, most recently as Executive Pastry Chef at the Four Seasons in Vancouver and the sumptuous chocolates and exquisite pastries in his shop were metaphorically, and probably literally, to die for.

Their hot chocolate was the best we tasted on the tour and the almond croissant was the best I’ve ever had anywhere in the world – the perfect combination of crisp savoury outer shell, perfectly toasted almonds and dense squidgy, not too sweet almond filling.  The macarons I brought back for the Minx (who has expensive tastes) were as good as Laduree.

 

 

Later that afternoon we visited Mink Chocolates and indulged in yet more hot chocolate and a decadent individual chocolate fondue. The speciality here is individual bars of premium quality iPhone-sized ganache-filled chocolate with super cool names, such as Ruby & Tawny Are Friends, Open In Case Of Emergency, Pas De Deux or Mermaid’s Choice and funky colourful packaging.  Their striking beauty, and the individual bold statement chocolates in the shapes of hearts and lips, reflect owner Marc Lieberman’s fine arts background – he does all the graphic design himself, as well as develop the chocolates.  I bought a stack of chocolate bars for the Husband’s Valentines’ present and can confirm that they are  pretty darn wonderful.

For supper Stephane at the hotel recommended ReFuel, again in Kitsilano, which specialises in fresh local ingredients and did fabulous things with charcuterie, marrow bones, BC spot prawns, chalkboard art and funky light fittings at a very reasonable price.

 

 

Another highlight of the trip – though my photos unfortunately didn’t turn out too well -  was our trip to Bella Gelateria. We had every intention of trying the hot chocolate but after James the owner talked to us at length about the wonders of his pistachio gelato, made from specially-ground paste, using pistachios from the slopes of Mount Etna, we changed our minds. I consider myself to be something of a pistachio gelato connoisseur – it’s been my flavour of choice since I was a kid and I’ve eaten it all over Italy - and this really was incredible.

Finally here are a few more photos of the splendours of the ShangriLa, featuring their signature chandeliers, their smiley staff, an immense afternoon tea (with OMG! REAL clotted cream) and a doozy of a breakfast, including my first ever taste of congee, which I adored.

 

 

And a couple of pics of the incomparable Stephane at work, who did so much to make our trip one of the most fun and memorable I’ve taken in ages.  Merci beaucoup!

 

We had a lot of fun posting pictures and tweeting and checking in from all Vancouver on Facebook and Twitter and will definitely be back again next year to check out all the chocolate stops we didn’t make it to this time round.

If you’re on Twitter you may want to follow @thaaschocolates @ShangriLaBC @bellagelateria @CityFood_mag @refuel_bar @minkchocolates or my lovely friends and travel companions Viv @bonnevivante, Tracy @choicemorsel and M @bitterbiscuit.

And of course I can be found at @mirrormirrorxx or on www.facebook.com/mirrormirroronline

I Heart You Lots

 

No time for blogging today, but I couldn’t let the opportunity go past without telling you how much I love you all and appreciate your comments and emails.  Big slurpy smooches to you all.

Make sure you tell someone you love them today. Even if it’s only your mother.

 

 

I’m leaving you with a picture of the sugar cookies I made and iced a few years ago. Nothing so ambitious is happening today.

101 Things – Art of the Pie

 

Since living here I’ve learned how fanatical Americans are about their pies. 

In Britain a pie is a homely thing, most often made with apples, with a soft filling and a thin, light, crumbly crust. 

As in so many other things, an American pie is an altogether less delicate and more robust affair. The piecrust is generally thicker, crunchier, and baked to a deeper golden hue with a chunkier filling. Aside from apples, a whole cornucopia of different fruits is used, particularly here in the Pacific Northwest, with its fabulous stone fruits and soft fruits.  I remember watching Twin Peaks (which, incidentally, was set in the mountains close to Seattle) back in the day and being bemused that such a thing as cherry pie even existed.  It seemed so much more exotic and truly American than apple pie, which to me was just my British father’s favourite dessert and had no American connotations at all.

 

 

After finding out that I had a hitherto undiscovered talent for pie-making, I was determined to broaden my horizons further and take a pie-making class so as to learn how to make a classic American pie. Fortunately Seattle is home to one of America’s top pie gurus, Kate McDermott of Art of the Pie, so I added her class to my 101 Things List and two Saturdays ago, off I went.

The classes are held in the kitchen of her West Seattle home, where Kate first demonstrates her techniques and then you get to make your own pie to take home.

Kate first made her pastry. Her recipe is here and in all honesty, it’s not that different from the recipe I used for my Bramley Apple Pie.

Kate too is a fan of using pure leaf lard and European butter.  She gets her lard sent mail order from Pennsylvania - when I told her that you could get 100% pure lard in the chiller cabinet in any British supermarket, she nearly wept.  She specifies using King Arthur Flour, which she keeps in the freezer. Apparently this has a higher protein content than most flours, similar to Italian doppio-zero flour in Europe.

Kate’s not a great believer in strict measuring.  She doesn’t use scales, but instead pretty thrifted teacups and roughly-measured tablespoons. For her it’s all about the texture.

 

 

The big revelation for me was her method of rubbing in.  I’ve been making pastry on and off since I was tiny and used to help my mother and have always assiduously rubbed all the fat in until the mixture resembled tiny breadcrumbs. Instead Kate prefers to rub the fat in a little less so that you have mixture of crumb sizes – some like sand or cornmeal, others like chopped nuts, some the size of peas.

It seemed strange to see the finished pastry streaked with fat, but it’s the fat which gives her crust its mouthwatering flakiness and crispness.

While Kate’s pastry was resting in the fridge, we set to making our pie fillings. In January Kate uses high quality frozen fruits instead of fresh. I decided to unleash my inner Kyle Maclachlan and make a traditional American cherry pie.

To make Kate’s cherry filling you just add plenty of sugar and the merest hint of nutmeg and lemon juice to frozen pie cherries and then stir in a third of a cup of flour and a little quick cooking tapioca to absorb the juices. I am thinking of experimenting with adding ground almonds instead, but that will be for my next pie.

I also generally have a lot of trouble rolling out my pastry. Kate showed us how to give it a couple of hard thwacks with her sturdy ‘French pin’ to show it who was boss

 

 

and then roll it out using a pendulum-type motion.  I loved using her old-fashioned rolling pin, which is hand crafted from solid maple by Vic Firth Gourmet in Maine. Apparently he used to be timpanist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra before moving first into drumstick manufacture and then into rolling pins. Stories like this please me greatly and I have since bought one of my own. They’re available on Amazon.

 

 

Kate then filled her pie – a blackberry one – dotted the top butter and then showed us how to craft a lattice top

 

 

 

And here is my cherry pie.  I’m assuming you can imagine how proud I was of this.  Also I really want the little thrifted pot Kate uses for her eggwhite and water wash.

 

T

 

Then all our pies went into the oven and we spent the rest of the afternoon drinking champagne and eating Kate’s utterly delicious rhubarb pie, talking about pie, and reading about pie.

 

 

I think this almost qualifies me to be an honorary American.

 

 

More photos here.

101 Things - Food Photography with Clare Barboza

 

Over the last week or two, I’ve been dealing with a severe case of ‘I’ve got so much to do in every direction that I must go and hide and gibber quietly to myself in a darkened room’ which I’m finding is not the optimum solution to my ever-lengthening to do list.

So it’s mostly going to be pretty pictures until I emerge from under the layers of work, admin and clutter which are currently overwhelming me.

 

 

On Saturday I took some time off from the insanity, to do yet another photography class to keep me going on my 101 Things list. (By the way, I have apparently inspired Lara at Food. Soil. Thread and Helen at CountrysideWeddings to similar madness, so please go and encourage them too).

Clare Barboza, whose Child Photography class I recently took, is also a mega-talented food photographer and works out of the same awesome studio as Lara Ferroni.

The class was extremely useful. We talked about lighting and basic technique; critiqued photos Clare had taken; took shots of beautifully prepared and plated food cooked by Chef Becky Selengut and Marc Schermerhorn; tried plating and styling our own shots, critiqued our shots as a group and then got some tips on post production.

Here are some of the shots I took. My hit ratio of good shots to crap is still frustratingly low (and these had to be significantly worked on in Lightroom) but I feel like I’m starting to grope my way towards a style. The lighting and the studio props make everything so easy though.

I know I always say this (hey, what can I say, Seattle is STUFFED with prodigiously talented photogaphers) but again I can’t recommend this class highly enough if you’re into food photography. I believe Clare has got another couple of classes coming up, check on her blog if you’re interested.