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!

It's all easy guys

Today L-Bomb cane over for lunch and I made Gwyneth Paltrow's Easy Tomato soup. It is easy and it's very yummy in that simple tomato soup way. It was a real win for me because I had no time and little food in the house. And if I learnt anything on Instagram this morning it's that Gwynny just loves a simple recipe. Check out this smoothie recipe from this morning. 

Standard GP. 

Yep sounds about right. 

 Ok.

Is that a kind of yoga?

Cyclops?

Ummmmmm... 

He said what now?

Wtf?

Et voila!

See, simple!

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?!

Sunday Baking (AM)

Delia Smith is a doyenne of English home cooking who has lately been mouthing off about the fact that cooking shows don't teach people how to cook. Happily, she has a website that does, or she says.  Yesterday, I watched her tutorial on making sponge cakes and then baked a walnut coffee sponge to take to Mum and Dad's for lunch. I felt like the combination of walnut and coffee was nice and autumnal, and had an old school quality that would make it appealing to my pezzies. The idea that I was making something that appealed to their tastes more than mine made me feel like a really great person, so that's what I did.

Here is some of the stuff that goes in the cake. 

Just the usual really. However, Delia uses self raising flour as well as baking powder. That confused me. And she doesn't separate the eggs and whip the egg whites. You know, to make the cake nice and airy. She just whacks them in there holus bolus. The only airiness comes from sifting flour. 

I was dubious about that.

Everything gets mixed together and then chopped walnuts are folded through. 

Then, the mixture is divided by two 18cm cake pans and baked for 25 minutes.  

Here is where my troubles began. In Delia's tutorial, she told me that tin size is very important in making cakes. But she didn't tell me why, nor the likely consequences of deviating from the recommended tin girth, which I was forced to do because I didn't have the right cake tins.

I don't know it was because of the tins or because my butter was melted instead of just being softened, or whether it has something to do with not separating the eggs, but my sponge cakes came out of the oven like pancakes, barely having risen at all. 

It didn't really matter when I sandwiched them together and slathered them with coffee cream. 

But still, I feel like Delia let me down. A sponge's raison d'etre is lightness and airiness. Without that, it's just a cake. Delia's recipe did not make a light airy sponge, and that makes me feel like she let me down. Did we eat it all? Of course we did, we are not crazy. Was it delicious? It was pretty damned delicious. But sheesh, if one of the world's problems is that no one teaches people how to cook anymore,  I'm not sure D-Smithy is the woman for the job. 

Crab Cakes: the Miss Soft Crab Bakery Workshop (PM)

When K told me her great idea for the Miss Soft Crab Bakery Workshop you can bet I jumped on board right away. Like K, I also want to bake sweet treats all the time but don't feel I can justify it. Though I do sometimes bake biscuits because they keep for a while, you know? And you can just have one or two or five with a cup of tea and feel ok about it. Cakes and cake-like things though seem ridiculous to cook for no reason. You just gotta eat those babies up. And I do not feel good about eating a whole cake in 2 days, which is basically what happens when I make cakes. But if it is for the good of the greater Crab community, I'll do it. I'd do that for you guys!

But today is about biscuits! Like K, I decided to go for a classic. Choc chip! I used Stephanie Alexander's recipe from The Cook's Companion. See?

The recipe is right there for you to see. But the run down is, you chop up some chocolate.

Mix it in with chopped nuts and flour, salt and bicarb. I used all the nuts I had on hand - almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts! Yeah boyeeee!

Cream your butter and sugar, mix in an egg, add it to the dry ingredients.


Log it and chill it.

Chop it.

And bake it. Twelve minutes later you've got these bad boys!

Now I know you guys have eyes and brains so I'm pretty sure you can imagine how delicious these are without me having to tell you. But I tell you anyway. These are delicious! 

My nana used to make chop chip biscuits and these smell just like them. The butter! The nuts! The choc! And though they are not exactly the same I could not care less, cause these are some beautiful babies, right here.

Loving myself sick (AM)

I'm as full of self-doubt, and at times self-loathing, as the next person. But every now and again I just love myself fully sick.

Like on Sunday for example.

I went to the shops for a few groceries and I had no idea what the eff I would make for dinner. You know, it was Sunday, so I had a little time on my hands, but I felt totally uninspired. And then I realised that the shop nearby would sell all sorts of interesting things. Like giant pasta shells. Which I would show you a picture of but, you know, they look just like regular pasta shells when there is no comparison.

For a long time I've wanted to make some sort of stuffed giant shell pasta bake thing. And on Sunday, I just freaking did it!  

I didn't even follow a recipe. I just made it all up from my brain! Wanna hear about it?

I made a nice rich napoli. Yeah I did.

I cooked and cooled the shells. Then I chopped a bunch of spinach up and mixed it with about 200g ricotta and 200g fetta. Yeah boyeeee.

Then I stuffed all that in the cooked shells. What an effing winning combo.

But check it out you guys, I wanted this bad boy to last a couple of nights and there's no way the yield would have been enough. So then...then! I chopped up a whole lot of mushrooms real small, fried them with some garlic and salt and pepper and stuffed that into the remaining shells! Are you hearing me people? Do you hear how delicious this sounds?

Then I put a little napoli in a baking tray, put in the shells in two layers, covered with napoli and some grated parmesan and baked that bad boy!

Seriously, that shiz was so freaking yummy, and the idea just came like a bolt from the blue. How could  I not love myself sick?!

The things that keep me up at night

I suppose if you just got home from a month in the Americas, watching Master Chef may not be the first thing you do. But me, I watch me quite a lot of Master Chef. Now I don't know if it is because I just cooked the shit out of ... my kitchen(?) this weekend, or simply because I watch a lot of Master Chef, but every time I woke up last night I thought about how I would have addressed last night's challenge if I was on that show.

Now I kind of know one of the people on Master Chef this season. He's the friend of a friend. A nice guy. And the only person I've known to be on a reality TV show, so obviously I am going for him.

Let me set the scene for last nights show. The contestants were told it was an invention test with a Spanish theme. They could chose one of three pairs of ingredients: lamb and anchovies; sherry and oranges; and choritzo and squid. The guy I am barracking for, let's call him Emo, chose one of the meaty pairs and then filled his basket from the pantry and claimed that he had never chosen a pantry basket so well. Then the judges swapped everyone's baskets and poor Emo got a sherry and oranges basket full of dessert ingredients. But he is not a dessert man. And moreover, he is lactose intolerant (all this I know from the show last night, not personal experience). He did really badly in the challenge and the judges were mean to him (I think Gary hates him, and George really stuck the boot in last night). AND the person who got Emo's basket won the challenge, didn't even acknowledge his awesome ingredients gathering.

Anyways all night I kept waking up thinking, man if I had got the basket Emo got I would have made a dessert sharing plate. I'd have made a custard, then split it in half, turning one part into an orange custard and the other into cinnamon chocolate ice-cream. I would have made a toffee for show and churros, but if they didn't work out well (I've tried them before, they are easy to make ok because they are fried and I rolled them in sugar and cinnamon which all adds up to yum, but they were not mind-blowing) I would just make some sort of biscuit. Seriously I was tossing and turning with these thoughts. But I guess I have a couple advantages. Firstly, as mentioned I just baked the shit out of shit this weekend.


And secondly, I am not on Master Chef. And I never would be on Master Chef. I cook ok, and that's it. I don't sit around thinking about what I would cook if I were going to audition for it. It's not like Australian Idol which I really did want to audition for because it would have been hilarious. (And FYI I would have sung 'Nothing Compares to You' - the Prince version obviously.)

But on that note I am going to share a recipe. Yesterday I pretty much ate all day, but at dinner time I still wanted to eat something yummy and easy. And from nowhere I remembered this thing I used to make when I was alone and hung over and hungry and at home with not much food. It's basically what I imagine is the vegetarian version of a meatball sandwich. In fact I'm pretty sure I invented it after watching an episode of Friends where Joey keeps eating a meatball sandwich. I really wanted to eat a meatball sandwich.

Serves 1

1 long roll or portion of baguette
1/2 small onion, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, sliced fine
1 long chilli (I like a pickled one) chopped
Olive oil
Sugo - a nice amount to make a juicy sandwich (1/2 a cup?)
Salt
Pepper
Paprika or dried chilli.
1 large field mushroom or a few buttons, sliced
Some cheese, (cheddar or Swiss or whatevs really) sliced - enough to fill your sandwich.

Preheat the oven to about 180.
Fry onion for a couple of minutes in the olive oil. Add the garlic then the chilli. Fry for a couple of minutes then add the sugo. Warm through. Season with some salt, pepper and paprika or dried chilli. Slice the roll in half, spread tomato sauce then put on the mushies, then the cheese. Wrap in foil then put in oven for 10 or so minutes. Just till the cheese is melted and the mushies are softened.

Now that's some good eating.