Too Late for Summer Pudding

Yes, late...  again...  but summer pudding is a wonderful English thing, reminds me of my mum, and was the most fun to make of the many things I haven't posted for you yet.  Perhaps you could make a variation with Fall fruit?  Maybe plums, blackberries, blueberries?

It's just cooked fruit, in a bread casing. I served it with cream, but custard is traditional. Whatever you do, the fruit combination needs to be tart, and dark purple-red. Personally I'd always avoid strawberries, too sweet and soggy. And ideally there'd be redcurrants and blackcurrants. Redcurrants we managed to find, blackcurrants were elusive - do you even have them in the US?  (Other ingredients here were blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries.)

Anyway, I made it for July 4th. Everyone brought fabulous desserts, as it turned out (and I'd made a backup chocolate thing too, in case the summer pudding went horribly wrong; will post that another time, promise). But even though it might be regarded as a little weird, with the bread and all, people seemed to like it.

The Recipe: Summer Pudding
From the BBC's h2g2, i.e. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Of course.

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes
Choice of bread is key - this is one thing where you don't want your fancy artisanal stuff. Something with a close texture, firm enough to hold the pudding together, but that will also melt nicely into the fruit. I did use store-bought white, but a fairly decent one. It was almost OK but, as they said, cheap store-bought white bread turns into an "unpleasantly slimy mush," and mine was a teeny bit closer to slimy than it should have been. Though frankly I'm not sure what else I could have used.

Here it is in the bowl:

The other thing I could have handled better was the juice. I was a bit afraid that the bread wouldn't hold up, so held back on the juice.

Looks pretty, but I should have "primed" it a bit more. Likewise, they tell you to pour two-thirds of the juice into the pudding at the end, but I held back. Again, you can see the result - it should all have been red:

It all came out fine in the end though - I just poured the remaining juice over before serving, and it soaked in fine.  No pictures of the whole turning out of bowl thing, it was a little stressful.

Knew there was some reason why I kept those weights!  Used baked beans for the full English effect.

Jack's Birthday Profiteroles

These were a surprise for Jack's birthday dinner. A surprise for him and for me as, incredibly, they came out perfect.

(Main course - his request - was swedish meatballs. Bring on the old jokes - or maybe don't...)

The Recipe: Profiteroles

Used Alton Brown's recipe - well, half of it, and made by hand (rather than with food processor).

For the sauce used a quarter cup milk, a quarter cup bittersweet chocolate chips, and a tablespoon of honey (a combination of Mark Bittman and Ina Garten). Didn't make the ice-cream, sorry.

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

Can I be a little smug at the fact that Alton labels these "difficult"?  Though that probably refers to the part where you're supposed to pipe them into perfect little shapes. Which obviously didn't happen here.  These are, shall we say, artisanal?

They were a bit heart-stopping, though. They stayed tiny for several long minutes after going in the oven. Oh well, I thought, they're obviously disasters, might as well do the washing-up. Then turned round and they'd popped up beautifully.  Not so difficult after all!  And apparently they freeze well too, which is a good job, as there's no way we could eat eight of them.

Next stop - gougeres, one of my unmet goals from last year. Onwards and upwards, people!

Weird Brownies

OK, so part of the reason I've been a bit absent (diffusion/confusion aside) is that I've been on the opposite of a roll - rolling down the gutter, really - recipe-wise. Case in point:















There it sits, all innocent.

Brownies. Pretty straightforward, one might think. I had some lovely raspberries and had seen a recipe for raspberry brownies on a BBC website.

That, says my cousin Kathryn, was my first mistake. To me, the BBC is a pillar of wisdom. But, as she wisely pointed out, they are British, and the British know nothing about brownies. Clearly.

The Recipe: Raspberry Brownies
Strongly disrecommended, but here it is anyway.

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

My first misgivings came when the recipe said to put in 9 oz of butter - that's two and a bit sticks! And then you're also using chocolate, not cocoa powder, so there's all the fat in the chocolate too. But I'm obedient. And it looked OK - pretty, even:





























It took a while to bake, and when it came out seemed... sweaty. Maybe it's the silicone, I thought. Lots of people don't like silicone. And the recipe did say that it'd be fragile and should be allowed to cool.

So we waited. Finally, the big moment. They were greasy to the point of slimyness. And the raspberries, which had seemed like such a wonderful idea, were actually a little distressing - they're hairy, of course, and encountering a hairy pink thing in the middle of your brownie, I dunno, maybe it's just me, but there was something a bit horrifying about that.

I had made weird brownies. More than that (it hurts to say it) I had made repulsive brownies. An achievement, I suppose, just not the kind you hope for.

But it's a testament to the awesome power of chocolate that we couldn't throw them away. They were incredibly rich and almost tasted good, in a "call the ambulance right now" fashion. They sit in the freezer, and occasionally when we're feeling incredibly sluttish we bring one out and eat it with reddi-whip.

Market Week Day 4: Berry Clafoutis

Had never heard of clafoutis until this week, when I stumbled across it while browsing Mr. B. for something to do with the raspberries/blueberries. Then looked on foodgawker and it seems like everyone is making them.

Found some great sites (e.g. Feasting on Art, Crabby Cook), but decided to go with Mr. B., as he's my god.

It was plate-lickingly delicious.

The Recipe: Fluffy Berry Clafoutis
Based on How to Cook Everything (10th Anniversary Edition) by Mark Bittman

• Butter for the baking dish
• 0.5 cup granulated sugar, plus 1 tbspn for the baking dish
• Approx. 2.5 cups berries (I had mostly blueberries, with a few raspberries thrown in)
• 3 eggs
• 1 tspn vanilla extract
• 0.75 cup all-purpose flour
• 0.75 cup cream
• 0.75 cup milk
• Pinch salt
• Confectioners' sugar for dusting

Serves 4-6.

1. Heat oven to 375F. Butter a gratin or baking dish that will hold the fruit in one layer (mine was a 2 quart baking dish, and worked perfectly). Sprinkle it with the tablespoon of sugar, then swirl the sugar around to coat inner surfaces. Lay the fruit in the dish.

2. Use a whisk to beat the eggs until foamy. Add remaining granulated sugar and beat with whisk or electric mixer until foamy and fairly thick.

3. Add the flour and continue to beat until thick and smooth. Add the milk, vanilla extract and salt.

4. Whip the cream to medium peaks and fold into batter.

5. Pour batter over fruit and bake for about 20 mins, or until the clafoutis is nicely browned on top, and a knife inserted into it comes out clean (ours actually took about 30 mins). Serve warm or at room temperature, with some confectioners' sugar sifted on top.

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

Was very happy I'd read a few recipes before trying this (e.g. sweet amandine's) because otherwise would have been a bit alarmed that it deflated when it came out of the oven, and is gooey inside.

Given that it deflates, not totally sure that it's worth whipping the cream to make it "fluffy." Mr. B. suggested this as a variation, and it sounded nice so I did it, but you can just add it along with the milk and I bet it would turn out pretty much the same.

Or you can use yoghurt instead of cream, in which case you could pretend it's healthy.

You can use any kind of fruit - a lot of people use cherries, he also recommends plums, apples, and apricots (his original recipe had 1lb pears, peeled, halved, and cored).

Farewell, Market Week...

We're away for the weekend, so this was our last recipe of Market Week. Used everything except for a couple of beets lurking in the fridge till we get back.

A big thank you to eatmakeread - it was a lot of fun!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Pix

Sorry no in-progress shots, it was dark and the cats were trying to get into everything. The first one is horribly gloomy, but just thought you might like to see what it looks like right out of the oven.

Rolo Cookies - Pure, Gorgeous Evil

Ever since I saw this on Cooking Stuff it's been lurking in that place in my mind - you know the one, where you keep the things you know you shouldn't do, but will. Sin in cookie form.

The Recipe: Rolo Cookies

Used the recipe from Spryte's Place, as that's what Bob said he'd do next time. But followed his example and just rolled them in sugar, rather than walnuts. He has great step-by-step pics too.

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

Almost made a pretty mighty mistake. Since I was halving the recipe, quickly jotted down the ingredients in the quantities I was going to need. But wrote baking powder instead of baking soda! Doh!

Luckily noticed before it was too late. Consulted baking911, it was all too confusing, so came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the risk of not fixing. So threw out the flour/cocoa powder/baking powder mix. Aargh! It killed me, being a child of a child of the (last) Depression.

Did I really have to do that? Would love to know...

But I did come up with a pretty good technique for putting them together, to toot my own horn.
a) chill the dough before starting, and intermittently throughout (it was soooo hot in our kitchen)
b) scoop a tbspn of dough, then push the rolo into the dough while still on the spoon, fold up the dough around the rolo, then push the ball out of the spoon, and roll in the sugar

Oh, and the packets of Rolos we get around here have 8 pieces in them. Half Spryte's recipe came out to exactly 24 rolo cookies - amazing!

Pix

Technique:















Cookie balls















Done - photo a bit weird - they're actually quite dark

Strawberry-Orange Muffins (and Cats)

Cooking is like swine flu. Viral. One day people are just going about their business, and the next they're all making strawberry muffins.

No immunity here. First saw a recipe on Eating Well, but that had a lot of ingredients, some of which were scary (e.g. buttermilk). Then there was another on noobcook, which was nice and simple but used lots of sugar. Then found one on eggsonsunday that looked just right (to quote Baby Bear).

The Recipe: Strawberry-Orange Muffins
From eggsonsunday.

Didn't exactly follow her recipe. We'd just been eating a lot of cinnamon & sugar in the coffee cake, and I liked Eating Well's idea of strawberry & orange. So... left out the spices, used orange instead of lemon, and all-purpose flour and milk instead of wholewheat and buttermilk. They came out beautifully.

But the original version looks great, will definitely try it.

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

Only made half the recipe. Didn't have enough flour, and Jack said: What would we do with 12 muffins anyway? Um, eat them, that's what we'd do! Four disappeared within 5 mins. So another time would absolutely make the whole thing.

Could have cooked them a little longer too (maybe between 20-25 mins in our oven).

Cats...

Meanwhile, the cats were playing with the box that the muffin pan came in. Peanut (orange tabby) had it, then his sister (Marmite) decided she wanted it, so got him in a headlock (she's half his size, btw):
















Pix

Batter:















In muffin pan:















About to be eaten...

Virtual Bake Sale: Marian's Fantastic Sour Cream Coffee Cake

This post is in honor of I'll Eat You's Blogiversary - they're having a virtual bake sale in aid of The World Food Program, a lovely idea and a very appropriate cause. (Food bloggers, join in!)

Here's where to donate - it would be great if you could. (If you do, please could you mention my blog in the comments section on that page, so they'll know where you came from - thanks!)

(And thanks to Bob from Cooking Stuff for passing the bake sale info along.)

And now, the actual post:

The other day, with the oven still warm from the cheese souffle, a crazy thought popped into my mind: what the hell, let's try that coffee cake recipe too. My first cake.

And a bit of magic happened - this came out perfectly as well!

Light and fluffy, moist and sweet, with a wonderful smell that filled the whole apartment. Even the cats were trying to get at it.

The Recipe: Marian's Fantastic Sour Cream Coffee Cake

One of those rare things - a real family recipe, passed around the country and the world. Marian lived next door to my aunt's family in Canada, and my mum got it from them. She hasn't made it since we were children (many years ago...) but it was just as fabulous as I remembered it.

Halved the recipe below, because we only have one 8x8 inch pan, but we could easily have eaten the whole thing.

• 1.25 cups brown sugar
• 1.5 tbspn cinnamon
• 0.75 cup butter [i.e. 1.5 sticks, or 6 oz - thanks to Spoonful of Sugar's handy conversion table]
• 1.5 cups sugar [wasn't sure what they meant, so used granulated - or perhaps it was superfine]
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1.5 tspn vanilla extract
• 2.5 cups all purpose flour
• 3 tspn baking powder
• 0.75 tspn salt
• 10 fl oz sour cream & 1.5 tspn baking soda, mixed together
• 0.25-0.5 cup milk

2 8x8 inch pans, or 1 9x13 inch pan, greased and lined. [Mine was silicone, so didn't do anything to it.]

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. Make the topping: in a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon. [Didn't have enough brown sugar, so used some raw sugar too - it actually worked really well, gave it a nice crunch.]

3. Make the batter: in a separate large bowl, combine the butter, sugar, beaten eggs, and vanilla extract. Sift in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the sour cream and baking soda mixture. Add between 0.25 and 0.5 cup milk (the mixture should be fairly thick).

4. Put a layer of batter in the pan, and cover with about 3/4 of the topping [I did about 2/3]. Cover with remaining batter, then remaining topping. Swirl with a knife (like marble cake). [Never having made marble cake, wasn't quite sure what this meant, but just swirled away.]

5. Bake for about 45-50 mins. [Ours was ready at 40 mins.]

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

Can't rave about this cake enough - it was really gorgeous. And it's obviously foolproof!

(Ooh, I tell you though, dividing everything in half made my head hurt.)

Pix

Batter:















Topping:















Out of the oven:















A side view:















From the front:

Chaos & Chocolate Chip Cookies

Wherein we learn the perils of baking under the influence, and that quiet cats are rarely being good cats.

We had just finished dinner (see previous post), and a leisurely couple of glasses of wine, and I said to Jack "I think it's too late to start baking cookies." But then he looked at me with those big teddy-bear eyes, and I gave in. Which is when the trouble started...

The Recipe: Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Found the recipe on Cooking Stuff, where Bob cooks the kind of stuff that makes you take his cookie recipe recommendations very seriously.

And sure enough, even though I did just about everything wrong (how can you do cookies wrong?! see below...) they came out delicious. That makes them the best chocolate chip cookies in the world as far as I'm concerned.

I'm no connoisseur though - you need an American for that job, and Jack pronounced them excellent, crisp at the edges, but soft and chewy in the middle. Then he started reminiscing about his mum's cookies, how she used to put walnuts in them, etc. So these may not be absolutely the best to his mind. But I'm definitely not getting into a bake-off with my 80-year-old mother-in-law, so am just deliriously happy that they were worthy to be compared with hers.

Oh, and a big shout-out to Kate, who gave us the baking equipment as a wedding present.

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

Bob has all these great step-by-step instructions, with pictures too - but these can only help you if you actually read them.

Somehow I managed to put the sugar in with the flour, instead of keeping it separate to mix with the melted butter. So in despair just threw everything in together and hoped it would work itself out.

Then noticed I should have let the butter cool first. Oops.

Then emptied the whole packet of chocolate chips into the mixture, and immediately wondered if 12 oz by weight is really the same as 1.5 cups by volume. (Still haven't got the hang of the American cup system.) Anyway, it did seem like an obscene amount of chocolate chips (though hey, what's wrong with that?)

But went ahead and stuck them in the oven. At which point a cry went up from the bathroom. While we'd been baking, this had been happening:




















Peanut (supposedly the "good" cat) sitting in the wreckage like - as Jack put it - a drunk surrounded by his empty bottles:















Back in the kitchen, the cookies took a bit longer than the 10-14 mins in our oven, but they came out perfect. You definitely don't want to overcook them, though, as they will firm up over time (a few days later and some of ours could use being a wee bit softer). They do pack a big punch of sweetness with all those chips - we might use dark chocolate next time? Or perhaps (horror!) fewer chips?

A few tips for other newbies:

• Didn't know how to tell when the cookies were done - this is what the internet is for - but once again, don't overcook
• They also recommend cooling the cookie sheet between batches, otherwise the cookies will spread
• Also, in a more sober moment, I'd researched silpat vs parchment - the conclusion seems to be that people prefer parchment for cookies (though this is probably a bit of a nicety if you're the kind of person who completely messes up the recipe...)

Pix

With everything that was going on, I only got shots of the final product:

Light & Fluffy Pancakes, with Banana Rum Sauce

Decided to make pancakes for Jack last weekend. Had meant it to be a surprise but the weather moved our plans around, so had to tell him. It was like telling a seven-year-old boy that he was going to meet Spiderman - he really wanted to think it was true, but just couldn't believe his luck, and kept peppering me with questions of a skeptical nature. So, these pancakes, what are they going to have in them? These pancakes, have you made them before? Are you sure you're going to have time before we go out? Etc., etc.

Bananas are his favorite, so they would be banana pancakes. I never had made pancakes, not even with a mix. And, emboldened by the baking, I'd decided to make a sauce too, it being Easter and all. So I was a bit worried about timing, not having made a syrup before either.

Since I'm such a newbie, it seems unbelievably reckless to say anything that amounts to "this has to be the best recipe for x, and the only one I will use for the rest of my life." But here we go: I believe this must be the best pancake recipe in the world, and I really can't imagine using anything else. So there. Try it and let me know what you think.

The sauce was great, too, though a bit over the top for pancakes - I'd definitely make it again, but would give it the more sophisticated context it deserves.

The Recipe: Light & Fluffy Banana Pancakes
(Note to UK readers: these are American-style breakfast pancakes, not crepes)
From How to Cook Everything (10th Anniversary Edition) by Mark Bittman

• 1 cup milk
• 4 eggs, separated
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• Dash salt
• 1 tbspn sugar
• 1.5 tspn baking powder
• Butter or neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn, as needed
• 3 bananas, sliced

Serves 4

1. Heat a griddle or large skillet over medium-low heat while you make the batter.

2. Beat together the milk and egg yolks. Mix the dry ingredients. Beat the egg whites with a whisk or electric mixer until fairly stiff but not dry.

3. Combine the dry ingredients and milk-yolk mixture, stirring to blend. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites; they should remain somewhat distinct in the batter.

4. Put about 1 tspn of the butter or oil on the griddle/skillet and, when butter melts or oil is hot, add the batter by the heaping tablespoon, making sure to include some of the egg whites in each spoonful.

5. Press banana slices into top of cooking pancakes. Cook until lightly browned on the bottom, 3-5 mins, then turn and cook until the second side is brown, a couple more minutes.

6. Serve or hold on an oven-proof plate in a 200F oven for up to 15 mins.

The Recipe: Banana-Rum Sauce

I found this via foodgawker. It's really supposed to go with a very lovely-looking pavlova.
http://greedygourmand.blogspot.com/2009/04/brown-sugar-pavlova-with-banana-rum.html

Thoughts/Tips/Mistakes

Making the sauce was slightly nerve-wracking, as had my eye on the clock, and it seemed to take ages to get to the syrupy stage. Also was terrified of burning myself/the cats with the superheated liquid - seemed like a horrible accident waiting to happen. But it was definitely worth it - very sweet but so banana-y, rummy, and good.

Looking at the pics, my sauce came out a lot darker - guessing I used darker sugar, but maybe it was something else. Also, didn't strain it, we don't have a strainer, and the banana bits were too tasty.

Pancakes were super easy and wonderful, though we did manage to burn the first batch on the bottom. We're making them again tomorrow.

Pix

Sauce, finally syrupy









Batter ready to go




Slightly odd shaped pancakes due to miscomm-unication between chef & sous-chef


Jack flipping
On plate, pancakes slightly singed on bottom; yes, that's Reddi-wip, I have no shame