Snownuts

K isn't the only one feeling pretty good about herself after discovering ghost tram. I'm feeling pretty special too. I don't want to brag, but guys, I've done it again. Two weeks ago it was apple pie toastie, now meet snownuts. And I'm not talking about Russeth's Friday night. 

A little while ago while talking about the prospect of buying donuts Baby started saying words that rhymed with donuts. "Are you buying brobutts? Snownuts?"

'Mmmmm, snownuts' I thought. I didn't know what a snownut would be, I just knew it would be delicious. White and pillowy like snow but fried and delicious like a donut. I tried to imagine how you could get something so lovely sounding. A donut covered in heaps of icing sugar. No that's just a sugary donut. I kept thinking about it going through different possibilities until it suddenly struck me. I'd make a meringue, fill it with something and deep fry it. SNOWNUT! First I thought I'd fill it with lemon curd but I felt like it needed something even more special than that and decided on raspberry curd. 

I knew I'd seen poached meringues before but I'd never seen deep fried meringues so naturally I googled it and found that Poh has a recipe for a fancier version of this using pandan creme patissiere and spun sugar. So I knew it would work and so I set to... work. 

First I made a raspberry curd which is just like making a lemon curd but I added some heated strained raspberries to it. 

Then I made my meringue. I noticed Poh included flour and corn flour in her recipe which I was a little wary of. But as a frequent pavlova maker I decided I'd add some corn flour for a little integrity. I used theee egg white about half a cup of castor sugar, about a tablespoon of corn flour and a little vanilla extract. Whipped it into some stiff snowy peaks and used Poh's technique to create the snownuts. This involved putting the meringue mixture into a ladle, making a well, adding the curd the covering that over with some meringue.

Then I fried the little bastards. Oh my god. Fucking snownuts! They are delicious. 

Snownut ripped open

They really are these lovely sweet pillows. I'd never really chose to eat a meringue, I don't like the crunchy chalky texture that they are often entirely made up of. I like that on the outside of a pav, but meringues tend to be all crunch, no softness. Snownuts are like the pillowy inside of a pavlova with a delightful deep-fried skin and a delicious tangy burst in the middle. In fact I think lemon curd would have worked pretty damn well here, like an inside out lemon meringue pie. But I guess I can try that next time!*

*As if. I have to stop inventing delicious sweet treats, especially of the deep-fried variety. I know where this is heading and it involves me not fitting into my jeans. And I love jeans even more than deep-fried things!

What I'm doing right now (AM)

Hi guys. Guess what I'm doing right now? I'm making hedgehog to take to the office tomozz.
Here in Belfast they have things called 'tray bakes' which are like what we would call slice. On a few occasions, people have brought them in to the office to share, only they've been those dreadful pre-packaged store bought numbers that aren't worth the margarine and corn syrup they're made from. I thought I'd make some proper hedgehog to share so i'm mixing butter and cocoa and crushing Marie biscuits as we speak.
Working Girl is on TV in the background.
I keep catching glimpses of Melanie Griffiths' hair and fur coats out of the corner of my eye and thinking that surely this movie marked the end of the 1980s.

Was anything ever as 80s as this again? I don't think it was. 

There is absolutely nothing funny about this post (AM)

I had a super restless night's sleep last night thinking about what to talk about today.

I intended to talk about my Sunday afternoon in the kitchen, trying out a new cake recipe and some different decorating concepts in preparation for Crimpy's birthday next weekend. But after sampling a considerable amount of each concept last night after a meal of cassoulet that Appleheart cooked with all the spirit of a French farm housewife, I pretty much don't want to think or talk about cake for a little while (read: just today). 

I certainly don't want to talk about the election. Though they do make one quite reflective, and this one in particular has given me off the charts reflective impulses. I keep thinking about the Kevin 07 election and how exciting it was to wake up the next morning and get out bed knowing there was a new PM and things would be different. And how obviously absent that feeling was yesterday. I also kept thinking about the last election night, which I spent at Miguel and Legsley's place I think. Is that right? I think it's right. It must have been just after their wedding which means I would have just met Crimpy, the person for whom I spent so much of yesterday baking.  

J and K dancing at the Miglegsley wedding. Such a swell time.

At that time, Baby would have been a fairly newborn baby.  Iszzle, the Miglegley's son, wasn't even a twinkle in their eyes. But now baby is a proper little boy and Izzle is a proper little baby, just one of a slew of babies who've arrived in the last year and a bit. See what I mean about this reflective malarkey? It's ridiculous. 

So nah, I don't want to talk about any of that. I don't want to bore you guys with it. The mood I'm in, I could go on and on. Instead, I'm just going to head off to work and see what happens today. But before I go, I just want to draw your attention to the photo at the top of this post. See that little green pot up there? Well in 2011, when I got that little green pot (a gift from Crimpy, coincidentally), it had three tiny little plants in there, much like it does now. I took care of them and they thrived and now the are the plants living in the terrarium behind the little green pot, and new tiny plants have taken their place. 

Amazing, non?

 

I made donuts (AM)

I think there is something wrong with me. Every time I do something awesome I pretty much love myself sick, even if the thing I did is really easy. Like the time I made croissants. I fully loved myself sick for ages after that. Still do in fact. Love myself more every time I do it. But, as I said at the time it's actually pretty easy.

Why am I so in love with myself this time? Oh, no big deal. Just made some donuts is all.

Happy Chanukah! I made these donuts/ponchkes/sufganiyot for Chanukah. You have to eat fried food. It's a rule. For reals.

But you guys, you can feel as smug as me too! It's totes simple! I know. I know. The deep frying is kind of off-putting. But it's seriously no biggie. Because those dough lumps are such little... dough lumps, the oil stays pretty fresh and totally reuseable. And they were nowhere near as greasy as store bought ones. Here's how you do it:

First put an apron on. I never do this but I can not stress how much better it made the cooking experience! I stayed so neat and could wipe my hands on myself without getting dirty!

Make a yeast dough with some flour, yeast, water, sour cream, egg. 

 

Let it rise. Roll it out, cut circles. Put jam on top. Don't these bastards look delicious already?!

Cut more circles and put on top of the jammed circles. They look messy, but don't worry guys. Just wait and see. Cause you gotta let them rise for a while.



 Fry them bad boys. Look how they look like real donuts!

 Finally, love yourself fully sick!

Look at them ducks

Where the hell are you going to put your ducks indeed?! You know to me it kind of sounds like a metaphor for that labyrinthine duck vagina Isabella Rossellini taught us about on Friday. But more pertinent to you.

I have to say that commenters "Sarah" and Cloudcontrol make some good points. When I first read your post my immediate reaction was that near the TV was definitely the goer. And I like CC's idea of them looking like they are about to fly out the window. But "Sarah"'s suction cup window idea is kind of adorable too. And you aren't getting Graham to put blinds up on that window, right? Whoever the fuck Graham is.

But to that thing you tried to hide up there in the first paragraph. Remember the other week you told me that you ate cream on apple and I was all "on raw apple, that is such a lame excuse to eat cream" and you were all "no, cooked apple" and I was all, "oh, that's totes legit" and then I felt bad for accusing you of such a thing. Well after that golden syrup in ramekin declaration I am withdrawing all bad feeling from accusing you of eating cream on raw apple.

Sweet, sweet cake

I want to eat sweet treats a lot. And it is tearing me apart. Because they are bad. And I kind of eat them a lot.

I've always enjoyed a delicious sweet treat but it wasn't till I got knocked up that I started craving those bad boys like nobodies' business. And now even though I'm not knocked up anymore I still want to eat sweets all the time. I make biscuits. And sometimes when I am in the supermarket and realise I am starving I buy and eat a Chomp. (Chomps are delicious by the way, light from the wafer but chewy from the caramel. I kind of love them.)

So I keep thinking I need to cut out sweets pretty much altogether. Because I know from experience that this is the only way. The less you eat of a thing the less you crave it. But then there always seems to be a sweet treat in the house. Sometimes this is my fault. I did go through a phase of making desserts a lot.


And those biscuits.


But then other times people give me things. Like a recent haul of ice-cream related paraphanelia which would be disrespectful not to use. Or some banana and sticky date cake I was given and is sitting in the kitchen right now!

And then there are the recipes I see that pique my curiosity and I think, just this one last time. But then curiosity begets curiosity. Or something.

You see I read a recipe for chocolate cake in David Lebovitz's The Sweet Life in Paris and it only had 2 tablespoons of flour in it. Anyone would be curious about that, right?

Basically the recipe was 4 eggs, separated, 250gm bittersweet chocolate, 120gm butter and 1/3 cup of sugar. And the 2 tbls flour. You melt the chocolate and butter over water, mix in the flour, egg yolks and half the sugar then whip the whites with a pinch of salt and the rest of the sugar and fold that through the chocolate batter. Bake for 35 mins. So I was imagining something light and delicious and chocolatey and I just couldn't get it out of my head so I had to make it.

The batter was delicious. Just like a super chocolatey chocolate mousse, cause that's what it was basically. And the cake was nice too. But dense. Really dense. Though not heavy. It had a delicious dark chocolate flavour. So I am not complaining about that. I should say though that I actually doubled the recipe, and not all recipes double well, so perhaps that had an effect on the density.


But now, right when I am trying to not eat sugar, all I can think about is finding the perfect chocolate cake recipe. You see when I was figuring out how best to present this chocolate cake I came across another chocolate cake recipe with no flour, no meal. Nothing. Eggs, cocoa, a couple of other things. How can I not make this!? But where will it end? WHERE?