Power baking (PM)

I think what I said to K about post-baby baking is that you just get really efficient. The days of Baby's babyhood were actually the most bake-productive of my life. I used to make biscuits all the time and boy was I efficient at it. I particularly loved these triple ginger biscuits. But I haven't made them in years. Because the thing about having a small baby is that although they are tiring and require a lot of looking after, they do sleep a fair bit and their inability to move means you don't have to clean up constantly after them. Also, you can usually have a cup of tea while you stick them under a mobile or something. I guess what I'm saying is that when have one small baby their nap time is really an enjoyable time in which you could do a number of things. Sometimes boring, sometimes enjoyable, who knows what will happen. Nap times aren't really like that for me now.

Mainly nap times for me now are about combating our ant problem actually. Those little fuckers have totally infiltrated our house. They are everywhere. EVERYWHERE! Clearly I am quite shit at lifing, as if I'd have time for baking. I can barely keep my house in respectable.

PS. Those melting moments look great. I wish I could make biscuits.

Power baking (AM)

When Appleheart returned home from Preston market yesterday with gozleme for lunch, I knew I had to bake something to ensure afternoon tea would be equally delicious. Also, my mum was coming over to look after KB for us while we went to see picnic at hanging rock. So I thought I had better be a swell daughter and bake something for her. Also, KB was asleep. J once told me that when the babies come along, the days of leisurely baking are over, and a new era of frantic baking while the wee ones are asleep dawns. I wanted to see whether I could do a full bake and dishes in the time KB has his afternoon nap, which could equally be called the time KB lies down with his eyes closed for about 35 seconds. 

It was quite exciting! 

I decided on melting moments because they are utterly delicious and have this much butter in them. 

It's a basic recipe. Cream together 250g of butter and 1/3 cup icing sugar. Add one and a half cups of sifted plain flour, and half a  cup of sifted cornflour (which I didn't have, so just used all plain flour). Mix well, then put into a piping bag and pipe little rosettes onto baking trays with baking paper. As if I was going to pipe rosettes. I just rolled them into little balls and pressed them down with the tines of a fork. They bake in the over for 12 mins. 

Things went pretty well. KB had a little cry just as I was getting started. I bolted upstairs, put the dummy back in and looked at him lovingly for long enough to feel like I'm not neglecting him (20 secs?) then ran back downstairs to cream he butter and sugar. It all came together super fast, and as the last of the biccies went in the oven I turned to the sink to do the dishes. Then, an obstacle presented itself. 

Ants! The little fuckers were congregating under the chux, threatening my timely progress and making me feel, as ant infestations always do, like I'm not very good at lifing. I saw to them as quickly as possible, did the dishes then got onto the lemon cream for sandwiching the biscuits together. 60g of softened butter, half a cup of icing sugar, the rind of one lemon and three teaspoons of lemon juice. I measured, I mixed, I tasted a little bit. Just as I was finishing, the timer on the oven went off and pow! The biccies were done. 

KB slept on as the bickies cooled and he even slept on as I sandwiched them together. What a little champ! A full bake, dishes and ant infestation removal all in the time it takes to have a nap. I felt very pleased with myself. Sadly for my Mum, KB was less pleased and apparently cried whole time we were out, poor little tacker. But you've gotta give these things a shot, right? 

Cheesecake experiments (PM)

Oh, cheesecake, that is one special cake. And yet, like K, when do I ever eat it? Never that's when. And let me tell you why: my Polish grandmother made the king of cheesecakes. A little sweet, a wonderful sour note, perfect density, a base strong enough to hold it together but not intruding into the overwhelming cheesecakeyness of it. Never has a cheesecake come anywhere near the deliciousness that was Babcia's cheesecake. She kept baking for a long time but as she got into her nineties the baking, unsurprisingly, got rarer. And after she died, the sweet treats really dried up!

Babcia was a great cook and baker, do not get me started on her apple pie (this is another thing to which nothing has ever come close). Periodically I say to my mum, "Do you have Babcia's recipe for this or that" and my mum will tell me it is somewhere or only in Polish or something like that and I'll say, "I really must get it from you" and then I don't, because then I'd probably end up with too much cheesecake or apple pie in the house. But it is time for the excuses to end!!!

I will find that recipe, and sure I will compare it to other good-looking recipes, but there is no question what is going to happen in my kitchen, Babcia's cheesecake will rise like a phoenix from the ashes that are forbidden by Jewish law.

 

Long winded, then a request (PM)

Oh man! I wish so bad I had the time to bake scones today. I mean technically I guess I have the time but if Newbie goes to sleep and gives me some free time I have to clean the house because it's such a goddamn mess right now it's driving me mental!!!!

Great story, right, 'mother must clean house due to messiness'. I'm sorry guys. I'm really sorry. 

Mate, write a review of that apartment!  I know exactly how this goes, man. Something really annoying happens, you think "eff these guys". You think about writing the review, you don't. You regret it for longer than you should because you really wanted to eat some goddamn scones. I've been there a million times. Write that damn review! 

Also you could probably buy an oven tray for cheap. Maybe from an op shop. Or use a few layers of silver foil as a tray. Plates are usually oven-safe. 

Long winded, then a request (AM)

Since my tour of this United Kingdom (and Ireland) began, I've read a lot of reviews on Trip Advisor.  It's not something I normally do, because online user reviews are so darn subjective and the people who write them are so darn annoying and nitpicky. You know, giving a bad review because the towels were scratchy, and the window wouldn't open more than 10 centimetres at 9:30 on a Wednesday morning. These people are annoying and are not the people I want to take advice from, and I certainly can't ever imagine being one. Good god, no. But where Trip Advisor reviews are useful is when an otherwise moderate, rational person has written a review because a place is truly shit and he/she just wants to warn his or her fellow consumers. These are very very useful reviews.  It's how I found out that one of the places that I was going to be staying for a month was actually student accommodation, opposite a remand centre, and being sublet by someone who despite their professional looking website, didn't have the authority to sublet it. So thank you Ken from Cornwall, that review was very useful. 

The place I'm staying in now got quite a few average reviews, but on grounds that made the reviewers seem more annoying than the place. The towels aren't replaced frequently enough. The pillowcases were a bit thin. The pillows themselves a bit saggy. Annoying, right? Not the kind of thing that would stop you staying there, right? I carried on regardless. And I'm glad I did, because the pillowcases are actually fine and the pillows are fine. 

And yet, I find myself on the brink of writing a Trip Advisor review. And here's why. Though this place is advertised as having an oven, it doesn't have an oven tray or any piece of oven safe equipment that one can use in the oven. Not cool! And when I emailed them to ask if they could supply something, they said no. No! The cheek of them! They said they just provide basic kitchen equipment. "So sorry!" they said.

"You will be sorry!" I wanted to say. And may still stay. But probably not. But they don't know that!

Anyway, I really want to bake some scones to have with jam and cream because THIS IS ENGLAND but apparently I can't. Hey Mate, I don't suppose you have the time to whip up a batch today that you could post about this afternoon and I can live vicariously? That would rule. 

What I'm doing right now (PM)

Northern Irish TV sounds like it rules!

I've got a bunch of baking ahead of me. It's Baby's birthday this weekend so I gotta make cake. And also biscuits because I bought a bat biscuit cutter that I guess I gotta use. I really wish I could watch Working Girl while I was doing it. I flipping love that movie. 

But I'm actually not baking right now because first I have to buy some ingredients and also stuff for Baby's party. Probably spend hundreds of bucks on that stuff and it's not even leather!

The Welsh Cakes Post (PM)

The first time I heard about Welsh cakes was in an email from K. All she said was 'Those things are delicious. Like a pikelet and a hot cross bun fell in love and had little babies.' I asked her to send a picture and it took days for her to come up with the goods. I think that the delay further piqued my curiosity. I was telling everyone about them. I was so intrigued by them. How the eff could HCBs and pikelets have babies? What was the texture like? I could imagine the flavour. I thought. When I Googled the recipe and found that they were made from a dough rather than a batter my mind was even more boggled. Griddle pan fry a dough. What?!?!?! Also when I Googled them I came across a Welsh onion cake. Of course we all know about Welsh rarebit. I starting wondering why the Welsh felt the need to put 'Welsh' in front of all their foodstuffs. Is it lack of imagination? A desperation to claim things as their own? It really made me wonder about the Welsh psyche.

Anyway you know what happened next. I made Russeth make them for me. And they were delicious!!! As you know from reading K's post they are full of butter. Now I don't know if the one's we made were authentico, as they say in Wales, but they were kind of crumbly cakes like a super moist not-dense scone. Also they were delicious. But they were first timers, you know? I gotsta make them again. Luckily this postcard arrived from K this very day!

Hello weekend Welsh cakes!

The Welsh Cakes Post (AM)

One of the first things I did when I got to Wales was eat a Welsh Cake, then another, and another and another and another.

I then frequently  referred to Welsh Cakes on Miss Soft Crab, but only in passing, promising I would one day write a proper post giving them the attention they deserve. 

This is that post!

And this is what Welsh Cakes look like sitting atop a piece of Welsh slate:

Oh Welsh cakes. 

Never before has a cake looked so very bland and tasted so very wonderful. 

When I first saw them at my local deli I thought they looked like a thin scone or a fat pikelet and neither option was terribly interesting to me. But I with so many sweet treats that don't look terribly interesting, I was drawn to them in their blandness, just in case my first impression was wrong. And finally I have all the encouragement I need to continue trying things that don't look terribly interesting, because when it comes to Welsh Cakes, I was wrong my readers, I was completely wrong. 

Those first Welsh cakes I tasted had the spice of a hot cross bun, but a rich butteriness making them more akin to croissant than scones. I loved them straight away. Some I heated in the oven and they were delicious. Some I ate as they were, and they were delicious. When I finished the pack from the fancy deli, I bought others. From bakeries, from supermarkets, from any damn place I could get my mitts on them.   They were all delicious. Most I ate with Welsh butter and it made the already delicious even more delicious.

 It turns out that Welsh cakes are made with dough, not batter, and are traditionally cooked on a Welsh bakestone, which is a stone for baking in Wales. 

I bought a cookbook called Welsh Bake-stone cookery so I could make my very own Welsh cakes. 

I'm yet to do it, but I will readers, I will. And in case you want to get to it before me, here is Bobby Freeman's recipe for Welsh cakes. 

225 grams of self-raising flour

1/2 teaspoon of baking powder 

125 grams of butter (cut into cubes)

75 grams of sugar

75 grams of currants

1 large egg and a little milk

A good pinch of mixed spice and an extra pinch of nutmeg

Add the spice to the flour, and rub in the butter.  Add the sugar and  the currants. Beat the egg with a little milk, then add to the flour mix until it forms a stiffish paste akin to shortcrust but a little softer.

Roll out on a floured board to 1/4 inch thick, then cut into 2 1/2 inch rounds and bake on a greased, moderately hot bakestone for 3-5 minutes each side until mottled with golden brown. 

Obviously none of us have Welsh bakestones, so cook on a griddle or heavy based frypan instead. Bobby Freeman says you can also cook them in a dutch oven which produces cakes that "are firm on the outside, soft and melting within." I don't have a problem with that. 

Project Chocolate Cake - The Cakes Are Baked (AM)

Saturday was baking day and well you guys...things did not go quite as expected for me.

The cake itself was fine. A breeze to put together and it produced a lovely silky smooth batter.

There was a not a huge amount of batter mind you, so when split in to two pans (as the recipe called for) it  yielded two relatively flat cakes.

Not to worry, I thought. It will all come together nicely when it's assembled and iced.
But the opposite of that happened!

The ganache was kind of a disaster. The recipe called for 300 grams of chocolate, half a cup of water and about 160 grams of butter. While I'm more used to the traditional cream/chocolate combo,  I have no reason to doubt David Lebovitz so I did just as he said.

Problems arose as soon as I started to whisk the butter in. It just wouldn't integrate properly. I kept going, thinking maybe it would come good as I added more but it really didn't. It basically started off split, and didn't stop being split.
Soon butter was just pooling in the bowl.
I decided to add some icing sugar and that helped, but shit guys. Its not meant to be like this.

Basically the assembled cake looked really fugly. 

I had to put Vaseline on the lens so it would look half decent. Not really. I suspect I accidentally smeared some butter on my camera phone lens because baking and photography really don't mix. 

Anyway, I decided to put hundreds and thousands on top, again so it would look a little more presentable. 

Better. But still not great.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that bit came later.

I took it to the Neville's house where I was going for dinner on Saturday night. 

When I cut in to it, I have to say I liked what I saw.

Fluffy and moist. Dark and chocolatey. Just what I was hoping for. 

And the taste, readers. The all important taste. It was delightful, truly delightful. A deadset sweet treat, but not cloyingly sweet. But...it wasn't very chocolatey. Sure, the ganache tasted like chocolate. The cake's taste declared itself of the chocolate family. But I think I wanted more. 

Perhaps this is impossible if one also wants a light and fluffy texture,  which happily becomes a little fudgey the next day. 

Perhaps you can't have both lightness and bold chocolateyness. Regardless, this is an excellent cake, and one I would totally make again. But, I think I'm going to have to try the Felicity Cloake recipe too.  I've seen what no chocolate in the recipe can do, now science needs me to see what chocolate in a recipe can do. 

Unless...the nigella recipe J is tried can answer the question. 

The best bowl I ever bought (AM)

I didn't want to go on about this to you guys, 'cause, you know, I guess I figure that you don't want to hear about some bowl I bought. Or at least you think you don't. But you guys, this is seriously the BEST bowl I have ever bought. Remember at Easter time how the lady crabs visited Pickle and Minderbinder in the country? Yeah, you do. Pickle cooked fish pie in her Falcon dish. She has a whole set. About a million of them. And they are so nice and simple. A few weeks later I had the idea to make a chocolate self saucing pudding. But you can't just make chocolate pudding for no reason on a Sunday night. Plus, I didn't really have a good dish for it. And then. Then I found this pudding dish for six bucks. Yep, Falcon, the most affordable of enamelwares. A bowl so nice I bought it twice. And a few days later was mother's day and I had an excuse to make pudding!

But this bowl is so much more than a pudding bowl you guys. First, it is adorable. Second it is the perfect size for so many things! Six-person pudding; two-person salad; two-person pasta bake using leftover pasta. A small fruit bowl. Mixing small quantities.

I never knew I could feel this way about a bowl. I mean it's just a bowl. But it does everything. I don't want to worship things or love things. I don't really approve of that. (Even though of course there are heaps of things I feel that way about. We are living in a material world, you know.) I just really never imagined a bowl would make me feel these feelings. I love how simple it is. How versatile it is. I love this bowl, you guys. I wish every bowl in my kitchen could be like this one. There! I said it. Sorry other bowls,. but this bowl is something really special!

Sunday Baking (PM)

You know, readers, I actually heard about this cake yesterday while K was at my house eating a cake that I baked yesterday and it troubled me. I bake a sponge using the Stephanie Alexander recipe from The Cooks Companion. It is a really good one. One of the things StepAl says is that you can cook it in two tins or cook it in one. Now that sounds flexible. Me, I've cooked it in round tins cooked it in loaf tins, had a perfect sponge every time and it just makes me think, what's the point in having a non-versatile sponge recipe when there are super versatile recipes out there? Fail D-Smithy.

As for me I cooked a pretty perfect cake yesterday. I had a pretty great birthday haul this year including these:

And these:

And when K said she may drop in on Sunday I thought I better make cake. Plus with a KitchenAid and great recipe doing all the work all I had to do was put stuff I'm a bowl and flick a switch. Then let some dough rise. Oh, then roll out dough, smear it with chocolate goo, roll it up Swiss roll-style, cut the Swiss roll in half lengthwise, plait the two halves, let it rise in a tin and bake it. And after that simple affair I would have a babka! Or, as it is called in Jerusalem and probably Jerusalem, a chocolate krantz.

I've been wanting to make this babka from Smitten Kitchen for ages, because a babka is one of the worlds finest cakes, but somehow I haven't got around to it but when I saw the recipe in Jerusalem nothing could stop me. Really, it was about 3 hours before seeing the recipe and having the ingredients christening the bowl of my KitchenAid. It's the kind of recipe in which the author apologies for the fiddliness or difficulty but in truth it really is just a bunch of simple steps. That's what I have discovered about so many fancy foodstuffs, they are easy they just take time. Cooking is easy.  Just listen to Delia Smith.*



*Not really,what does she know?!

Cinnamon Game Changers (AM)

I used to work at a prominent bakery franchise when I was younger. Back when bread was bread, which is to say it was white and square and sliced for either toast or sandwiches. This place also sold morning tea type treats like jam tarts, vanilla slice and of course a shitload of coffee scrolls. I don't know why people bought them. They were always so dry looking, and kind of big and overblown and not like the kind of delicious morsel you might really look forward to at morning tea time.

Anyway, spending time amongst so many unappealing coffee scrolls kind of turned me off the scroll completely. Occasionally I would see one in a recipe book and it would leave me feeling cold and uninspired. As more and more Scandinavian cookbooks came in to my life, so too did more and more scroll recipes. But it was always the same. I felt no interest. 

But then, Miguel brought Scandinavian style cinnamon scrolls to our Northern Delights dinner and everything changed. You should have tasted those babies. Bready in all the right places. Buttery in all the right places. Sugary and cinnamony in places I didn't even know about. Oh brother were they something else. I've thought about them ever since, and when Miguel sent the recipe, I knew it was just a matter of time before I made them mine. And last Sunday, when the weather was just right for proving dough, I made them. 

It was a piece of cake. 

First, you make a dough. 

Twas a very sticky dough. Then, you cover it with a tea towel and leave it in a warm place... 

...til it doubles in size. Then you roll it out flat  to about 80 centimetres. 

Next, you cover that baby with butter, cinnamon and sugar. 

You roll it up...

You turn that roll in to a bunch of scrolls which you let prove again. 

And you bake them until they look golden beauties oozing caramelised sugar and cinnamon. 

Such a piece of cake, right? 

But even if they weren't the taste would justify whatever labour they required. These babies are out of this world delicious. And a real game changer for me, making me think that scrolls are something I want in my life all the time. I hate it when recipes go on about how great your kitchen will smell when you cook something but seriously, these buns make your kitchen smell like heaven's oven, and it's part of what makes them so great. Just make them you guys. See if I'm wrong!

Terrific Tuesday (PM)

My Tuesday was terrific up until 11am. 

First, I got up early enough to get a coffee en route to the tram which I love doing but never get up early enough to do. 

Then, because I had decided to take the surplus baked goods I baked on the weekend to work to eat during our team meeting, the team meeting went very quickly and I got to eat baked goods during it. 

More about those baked goods tomorrow. 

But then I had another meeting that did not go quickly and resulted in a whole bunch of annoying work. So things got less terrific. 

 

But,  I plan to re-calibrate coordinates and steer this ship back to terrific waters by doing a little holiday research later. And of course tonight I am going to the pub for a free steak due to Mike Gatting's triumphant return to the trivia crease last week. So that's quite terrific. And maybe I will buy this cookbook today too. I can't stop staring at that picture.