Thoughts From A Purple Kitchen

Getting a little bit technical...

2014-05-01T00:07:00.001+01:00

With my health it's not always possible to guarantee a weekly post. In fact you cannot guarantee you'll be able to do anything regularly. So often you start with good intentions, but you end up in a heap in bed or on the sofa unable to even type because your fingers hurt and your brain is so full of fog you can't remember how to type.

You can use any powdered colour you like to home colour your non-pareils. That means if you've used a powdered colour for the fondant or frosting you can use the same colour for the sprinkles, or a dramatically different colour to highlight them.

An invisible illness doesn't cease to be a illness just because people cannot see a cause, or because I'm having a good enough day to be bright and bubbly while I'm wheeled round the shop. I've been told I can't be ill because I'm happy, that I shouldn't be going out at all if I'm that ill; all of which achieves only one thing - it depresses me. It makes me focus on what I can't do instead of the amazing things that I can still achieve.

I love using this colour. As strong as turmeric it gives pretty, vibrant shades of yellow to the nonpareils.

One of the things that makes me very happy is writing this blog. Being able to hand out my knowledge and pass it on to you, the readers, to enjoy doing the things that I love doing so very much. Even when I can't do them myself any more. Going through pretty pictures of lovely colours makes me happy, too!

The tumeric yellow with the lovely non-pareils it coloured. As you can see, I have quite a range of powder colours

This week was one of those difficult weeks where I couldn't bake, where I had to lay back and rest and catch up with all the things I'd set aside for times like this - catching up on the blogs, editing photographs, getting back in contact with people on Facebook and learning what's been happening in the baking world.

So, whilst confined to the sofa I'm offering you a couple of little bits that I put together earlier, but which weren't enough on their own to make a blog. How to colour your own sprinkles and a test of grinders and their ability to grind things properly. I do hope they help you to make the most of your kitchen equipment and to have a delightful display of coloured candies to top your own creations with.

My other little storage secret - Spice Stack boxes from Amazon. Originally designed to hold 72 spice jars in three trays that pull out from the tidy box, they now hold my hundreds of jars of powdered colours and dusting powders and glitters and sprinkles that come in tiny tubes, and anything else very small that's dry and used for dusting, colouring or decorating my cakes

Colouring your own sprinkles is the easiest thing in the world. You get some white sprinkles or, in this case, nonpareils, and some powdered colours. You combine the one with the other and shake until it's done. By the way - don't try this with the glittery ones, it just doesn't work. I tried it myself and ended up covered in glitter but with none of it sticking to the coating of the candy. Sad, but there you go.

So - here's my little storage box, filled with lots of lovely sprinkles. There are still a couple of boxes of plain ones to be coloured up as needed. I have yellows, blues, reds, pinks, purples, gold and silver. If it's a dusting powder or a powdered colour, it'll work! It's because they stain, they don't just sit on the sugar coating but they give over their colour to it.

I used these tiny organiser boxes from Rymans, made by Really Useful Box - they are really useful.

Put your sprinkles in a jar or box or whatever container you're using, add a small dash of the powder, to start with, and shake well in all directions. The powder will constantly filter down as you shake, so tip it sideways, tip it upside down, and shake it all around to make sure all the sprinkles get the colour. The more powder you use, the richer the colour on the sprinkles, and the more you shake, the more even the colour.

Commercial coloured sprinkles, plain white nonpareils and home coloured - you choose!

I don't always want that, so I tend to make sure about half the sprinkles are done dark, first, then I add more sprinkles and carry on shaking to get a mixture of tones. When they look how you want them to look, stop shaking! Don't add too much powder, it's not needed and it will only end up in the bottom of the pot. These particular nonpareils were supplied to me by the kilo from the lovely Alison at pink*hibiscus on eBay or you can contact her direct for special orders at alisonsmith100@gmail.com

I have to say, of all the nonpareils that I have bought over the years, these ones are working especially well, and her kilo price is very good value, too. I shall certainly be buying more sprinkles from the lovely Alison.

My tiny tower of colour - not so tiny, but very colourful

Ok, onto the grinder test. I wanted to grind sesame seeds; sadly, like most oily things, if you try this you tend to end up with butter or a very clogged grinder. So over time I had acquired several means of doing things like grinding or milling grains and seeds. I still haven't found one that reliably crushes sesame seeds without pulping them, but I'm working on it. Meantime I have several grinders or things that also grind, and I never know which one to use. This means it's time to do some testing!

Having read about lemonade powder cookies and frosting and such I found some lovely berry tea granules that I wanted to try for the same things - we can't get lemonade powder in the UK, so this was a potential substitute with no artificial sweeteners or other allergy inducing contents. We love Lidl!

The granules were clearly going to be the perfect thing to test the grinders with. The rules were that the granules were put into the machine, either as many as I had or as many as the machine would take, ground until I couldn't ascertain any more changes occuring, so it's pretty much done all it's going to do, then removing the granules to a sieve.

Kitchen Aid artisan blender - not as good as it could be, to be honest, in several ways.

To start I went to the largest bowl of the 3 I was testing - the Kitchen Aid Food Processor. Having a clear, plastic bowl for processing foods meant that I could watch the process easily to see how it was going, both from the top and from the side.

Easy to see the big bowl didn't work

Sieving was first to be done by shaking only, with tapping allowed at the end of the powder having gone through, just to take out the bits caught in the mesh that will actually go through, but only a few taps, no more. The remainder in the sieve were to go to the next grinder.

Ready to go with the top bowl in place with the smaller blade attached to it.

The granules put in the Kitchen Aid looked good at first, but when I sieved the powder it turned out only about a fifth the granules had been crushed. It also spat the powder out the lid, over the sides where there is no real seal. There are a lot of things I love about my KA food processor, but for every love there is a hate - and the lack of seal on that lid is very high on the hate list along with the bowls ability to scar badly!

Small bowl in situ, inside the larger bowl

Because I'd used the largest bowl, designed for chopping not grinding, I wasn't overly surprised at the poor result. Next I used the smaller bowl that sits inside the big bowl, and the shorter blade, which is intended for grinding. I have to say, this was a great disappointment. It didn't actually process anything smaller than it went it. Total loss. Maybe if I'd tried the granules up here first the results would be the other way round; but either way you can say that the Kitchen Aid clearly doesn't grind things very well at all.

The smaller bowl for the Kitchen Aid

So - biggest bowl on the Kitchen Aid with the relevant blade only did 20% of the granules, and the smaller bowl with the relevant blade did absolutely nothing. Not very good, but then this is a domestic piece of equipment intended for preparing vegetables, making pastry and so forth; so for domestic kit not designed to do the job it did its best. And I have to say, it knocks out amazingly good pastry in about 90 seconds flat!

Very not good - but the pastry is amazing!

On to the next machine, and a professional piece of kit this time. The Waring Pro Prep Commercial Chopper And Grinder made by Cuisinart. This machine comes with two bowls, one marked chop and one marked grind.

Waring Pro Prep Commercial Chopper and Grinder by Cuisinart with chop bowl and blade fitted.

The grind bowl comes with a different, much lower blade designed to get as much as possible ground small. It is also fitted with a blade like attachment on the base of the bowl and a serrated blade on a protuberance on the lid - closing down the space so grains can't escape when you're grinding. This looked like a good idea and I was hopeful that it was going to work.

Yup, has it on the bowl - GRIND

I ground it the same way as the first one, until I couldn't see any more changes happening. It took about the same time, too. A couple of minutes straight run, then a few pulses and it was done. Or finished, at least! Again, having a clear plastic bowl paid dividends in being able to observe the process from the top or the side.

Looking good so far!

Pouring the granules into the sieve and shaking it we did really well, almost 90% of the remaining granules were powder. A significant increase on the previous machine. Also, the bowl being about half the size of the KA it meant that half the granules was plenty to test it at a max setting. I was really quite pleased with this - but we still had about 8% of the original amount of granules left.

Not so good after all.

Enter machine number three, the smallest, but still a professional piece of equipment; the Waring Professional Spice Grinder. This suffers from having a metal jar with the blade fixed in the bottom of the jar, so you cannot change the blade, and you cannot see what's happening in the jar.

Waring Professional Spice Grinder

The jar slots into the base and you have a clear cover that goes over the top of the jar and engages with the base so you can press the large button on the top to set the motor running. This also contrives to ensure you can't see what's going on because your own hand is now in the way.

Not a lot of granules left to grind

The machine comes with three jars and three lids so that you can save your spices in the jar if you wish - assuming you only ever use three spices! You can, of course, buy extra jars and lids if you want to go this route and being stainless they won't hold smells, either.

The only machine to try to recreate a desert sand storm in my kitchen. Not to self - next time leave it a while before you disengage the jar

Being a spice grinder, designed to cope with hard shells, I was hopeful that this would be the one to do the job. Despite being half the size of the previous bowl I could only fill the jar enough to cover the blade with what was left in the sieve; and being unable to watch the process I had to listen for the tone of the motor.

Looks promising from up here

When it's working it meets resistance, so the tone of the motor is different to when the blade is spinning freely. When I had heard two changes of tone I opened the lid and took a look.

Looks very promising here, too. Let's give it a shake

From the top the results looked good, but I was aware that heavier particles would be underneath, so it wasn't necessarily a good result yet. I could have taken it off too early. However, when I tipped the jar into the sieve the contents went straight through without hesitation. It was a 100% success! I was seriously happy.

One very empty sieve

Knowing what your kitchen equipment can do, and to what level it can do it, is just as important as knowing your oven temperature or which knife to use for which job. If you don't know it then you've not only wasted money buying the equipment; but you will end up with several pieces of equipment that do the same job and you just don't realise it. Clearly these three machines do three very different jobs to different levels of precision. Knowing that means I can go straight to the machine I need for the job.

Pouring the powder back into the jar I had to use a chopstick to clear the log jam in the funnel

If I want to chop peppers or make amazingly good shortcrust pastry, I'll use my Kitchen Aid Food Processor. If I want to roughly chop nuts or fresh herbs I'll go to the Waring Pro Prep. But if I want to mill spices or grains I'll go straight to the Waring Spice Grinder. Since, under normal conditions, I do all of those jobs, it's great to know that I have the equipment I need to do it right.

Lemon granules in a full jar showing where we started and powdered berry tea granules which now fill four fifths of the jar showing how we ended up. Powdered!

Sadly I'm still stuck with not having anything that will crush, crack or lightly grind sesame seeds without making them into sesame butter. Very taste, but not what I want in my recipes!

Waring Professional Spice Grinder and Waring Pro Prep Commercial Chopper And Grinder from Nisbets.

Kitchen Aid Food Processor from Kitchen Aid

Pink Hibiscus on eBay for all your spinkles and nonpareils.

Tuaca and Trifles

2012-08-03T01:16:00.000+01:00

Mr AB started moaning recently about the lack of puddings. Which is odd, because he normally moans about there being too many! However, his all time favourite pudding and one guaranteed to put a stop to his moans is an English classic. Trifle!

A piece of butchers wrap in your scales when you weigh the butter saves you cleaning it before the next ingredient

Not the stuff you came to hate with tinned fruit, sloppy jelly, stale sponge fingers and tinned custard with a smear of dairy topping. Oh no, this is a trifle fit for a queen! Fresh fruits, capped with home made lemon jelly, topped by a fresh sponge, in this case spiked with Tuaca, layers of fresh vanilla egg custard and heaps of fresh cream decorated with maraschino cherries and 100's and 1,000's.

Believe me, you never got this at school!

Tuaca is a new bottle in our cupboard, simply because I was curious. It's delicious! It's a little bit citrus and a lot of vanilla. Try it neat, or with a 7Up for a long drink. If you like seriously sour you can tip it into some SanPellegrino Lemonade, but you might want to make it a double to counter the lemon. I decided it was perfect for a grown up trifle that didn't taste of Grand Ma's old sherry!

Personally I hate the sponge used in most trifles, so I prefer to make my own. First of all we take 4 oz or 100g of butter, add 4 oz or 100g of caster sugar - in this case golden caster sugar. The sponge we are making is a pound cake base - tried, tested and delicious!

Recipes will tell you to cream together the butter and the sugar until smooth. I'm going to take you one step further. First cream your butter alone until it is pale and fluffy.

When you add the sugar it will get gritty and lumpy - keep mixing at a fair rate, 2 or 3 on the Kitchen Aid until you get that pale fluffiness back, and make sure you do before the next step.

A pound cake is the most basic of cakes - equal quantities of flour, butter, sugar and eggs with a raising agent. It starts as a pound of each, meaning 9 eggs usually, and 4 tsp of baking powder. In this case we're using a quarter of that - 4 oz each of flour, butter and sugar with 2 eggs and one teaspoonful of baking powder. Weigh out your flour and set it next to your stand mixer.

2 eggs in shells = just over 4oz or 100 grams, so without shells they're the weight we need.

When your butter and sugar are light and fluffy you're ready to add your eggs. I will say this in every recipe where we use eggs, I will keep saying it until I am blue in the face, yet every last one of you, just once, will break an egg straight into a mixture and put contaminated shell in your dessert. I know you will, because I've done it when exhausted and not thinking straight and had to strain out the whole damned lot to get a tiny piece of shell. Break your eggs into a bowl before adding and check them.

Look Ma! No shell!

This is where recipe books get all stroppy with "you must whisk the egg first" or "alternate adding the eggs and the flour only a grain of each at a time". Ok, let's get this straight. If I were doing this by hand with a wooden spoon and a ceramic bowl I would absolutely, hand on heart, be following those directions. However - and it is a *big* however - this machine is a KitchenAid. It would eat the little hand mixer on a stand a lot of our mothers used for breakfast and barely stop to spit out the debris afterwards. Take your eggs, put them in the mixer bowl and continue to beat on 1 or 2.

Go on, be brave, and stop being intimidated by your machine. Make it do what you bought it for!

Don't freak out if the egg doesn't completely blend in immediately, let the machine do the work, it will make a nice smooth paste for you, I promise.

Motion blur, but you can see, it's mixing those eggs right in!

After a moment or two add your flour, even if the egg still isn't incorporated completely. Dump it all in there! In the UK our flour seems to be softer and finer and need less sieving than American flour. Unless I'm on a new recipe I rarely sieve the flour unless I'm using bulk bought very cheap flour. Which I don't!

You can see, before I even have time to get the scales bowl away from the mixer, there is already a smooth cake batter appearing. See? I told you it'd be ok.

Don't get too excited, though, because as soon as that batter is smooth and you've worked in the vanilla you want it out from under that beater blade. Over beating a sponge is as bad as under working it, which is why I said get the flour ready before you pour your eggs.

That batter's nearly perfect, and it's still only on 1. I even took a picture for you. Unless you're doing huge amounts of really tough stuff with a KitchenAid you're never going to need to turn it up more than 4. Even with bread, this machine has enough power to drive through the dough happily at lower speeds.

Just be aware that it doesn't have a soft start, it comes in full power and you better be braced for that! I often start the blade up out of the mix and then lower it in. I'm not sure if you're supposed to do that, but it works for me, particularly when your first ingredient is icing sugar!

Although the use of alcohol in vanilla extraction is a tad moot when you're about to tip a large quantity of alcohol all over the dessert it's worth noting that the wonderful Vanilla Mart do an amazing Vanilla that is so alcohol free it is marked Halal by the relevant councils. It is extracted using glycerine instead of alcohol and it's 10 times stronger. So you only need one tenth of the amount. Need two teaspoons? Use a fifth of a spoon. Much more economical, gives an amazingly good vanilla taste, and combined with their Vanilla Paste it's heaven! The paste does have alcohol in it, though, so be careful if you're cooking for anyone who has specific dietary needs.

In goes what looks like not much, but is, in fact, an extremely generous measurement of vanilla. It was at this point that my brain took a step sideways and I forgot the baking powder. More of that later. It looks like there's liquid in there, because there is. I added a tot or two, maybe three, of Tuaca to start the flavours rolling.

That small drop really is all you're going to need for the whole tin.

Whatever sort of tin you've got, for a pound cake it's always worth lining it. In the case of a tin with a loose base, either push through, a form on a baking tray or even a spring clip tin it *will* leak. As the butter gets warm and runny you're going to get leakage, and I don't think any of us like cleaning the bottom of the oven any more than necessary!

See?

First cover the bottom and sides of the tin well with a tiny amount of Wilton Cake Release. If you don't have this product you're going to either use oil or butter. The advantage of the Cake Release is that I know it won't leak the same as the batter, this stuff stays put, despite being very slippery!

Cut round your tin about 2 inches or 5cm away from the tin edge, so that you have a piece of parchment larger than the tin base. Then you want to cut in, about every inch or so, towards the tin, as close to the base as you can get. I've moved my tin back a bit here so you can see the cuts.

Push the paper into the tin and press it down across the base. If you run a thumb nail round the tin it will fit snugly into the corner between the base and the side.

Then go round the edges and press back the frill that has appeared. This is to keep the side pieces from ending up in the sponge where they can be hard to get out. The reason we don't go right the way in with our cuts is so that there is a sight lip of intact parchment on the side of the tin before we tuck our cut pieces in neatly. This helps to keep the batter where we want it.

Time for baking. Of course your oven has been preheating so it will be at the right temperature. You could just throw it in like this, but you're likely to get a very weird looking sponge back with some crispy bits, which is not what we want. So take a moment to smooth it out a bit, evenly across the tin.

Middle of the oven, don't overcook it, as soon as it looks perfect on that cake tester you whip it out. It's likely to be very pale still, which is good.

Ok, so we let our sponge cool in the tin for a while, about 20 minutes or so, then we take it out. At this point I'm thinking "ok, it's a sponge and not a biscuit, it has bubbles on the top, it's risen a little. But why is it not taller???

Ok, this is where I'm now exhausted, having just cooked another meal for the other blog, and now I just want this damned trifle made and out of my life! First thing is to get out everything I need. I keep looking at the sponge and thinking ??? every so often, but hey. It's a sponge, right? It's more than twice the height of the batter I put in, so it's ok.

Hot water ready for jelly cubes - just follow the packet instructions.

You noticed the yellow/lemon packet jelly? Hartleys. Not cloying or sickly sweet, but sharp and fresh. Which is good, because I am in no mood to make jelly from scratch right now, whatever I said way up the top there when I hadn't already had to cook another whole meal!

Here you can see the cubes already starting to melt, and they haven't even been stirred yet.

This is actually a good thing, because now you know a) I am fallible, b) I am not Super Woman (TM), and c) there are shortcuts you can take without spoiling the whole thing. I think I've said before that a good shortcut is worth using.

Did I mention I was tired? Well, this trifle is supposed to be made with lumps of set jelly. That just isn't going to happen. By now I'm in snarl mode and barely able to stand up. So - another short cut. It says when the cubes are melted completely top up the fluid with cold water. I used ice chips. Set fridge machine to make crushed ice and bring it up to level. Leave it for a bit until no more chips dissolve, then strain it into another remeasuring jug. If you're not fortunate enough to have a fridge machine that does ice, just put some ice cubes inside two bags (one inside the other), wrap it in a tea towel, put it on something very hard that won't break and take out a bit of frustration on it with the rolling pin!

Top the second jug up with ice cold water and stick it in the freezer. Meanwhile, you can get on with other stuff, like whipping the cream. In the UK we have double, whipping and single cream, each with less fat in them than the preceding one. Single won't whip, whipping will give you a soft whipped finish, but if you want solid whipped cream you have to go for double. It's thick and rich and it whips like a dream.

As soon as you see the stage below, stop. Immediately. If you go any further than this point you will have delicious butter for your morning toast, but no cream for your trifle. You can leave it a bit less firm than this, a bit softer, but you already have a soft custard for that texture, so we take the cream to the harder stage where we can use it to hold things up. I also added a touch of vanilla to keep it tasting in theme with the rest of the ingredients.

Next job while the jelly cools and the prepping is done? Back to that sponge. It is a sponge, I'll give it that. It's a bit dense in the middle, bit it's a sponge. You can see from the pieces on their side, it's a sponge! But I still keep thinking ??? Because as plump and delicious as it is, there's clearly something not quite right here.

??????

Ok, moving on from the sponge we have a lot of fruit here, and it's pipping time. Himself and I both love bananas, so that's a given. July is time for berries and stone fruits, and I raided the local supermarket for all it had fresh and ready to eat that same day. Then I got home and remembered how much I hate peeling peaches.

My best tips for this - since I don't like blanching peaches to remove the skins - use a potato peeler. With cherries, peaches, plums or any other stone fruits, roll them firmly in your hands first. Cut along the split , where the edge of the stone or pit will be, from the stalk or stalk hole, along the split or dent, all the way from top to bottom and back up the other side.

I'm afraid I was so tired by this point I got the camera the wrong way up and took upside down photographs. No wonder I made a mistake with the sponge. But it still didn't twig! Having cut the stone fruits in half, twist the two halves against each other, turning them in opposite directions to separate the fruit, just like you would an avocado. You can then use your thumb or a teaspoon to slide under the stone and just pop it out.

Technically I could turn the photo up the right way and replace it on the blog page, but I think it helps you to realise that with ME a brief shopping trip by wheelchair, cooking a delicious but fairly simple meal with the help of himself, and getting this far into a trifle is not only physically exhausting, but mentally challenging, too. You become unable to process the data around you, like walls, doors, upright, floors, steps. The world suddenly becomes a disorientating minefield where a cat running through your field of vision can make you fall over or your feet go numb as one bit of information too many enters your fried brain. So - welcome to my world!

When the fruit is all prepped, stoned, chopped and ready to go, get the jelly out of the freezer where it's hopefully set a bit. Something worth remembering here. If you remove from the freezer a large article such as, say, a full box of valuable meat, so you can place your jug in there for five minutes or so - when you go back and get the jelly out you might want to put that box back in again... Yeah, we had defrosted steaks for dinner the following night. Mr AB also made several steak pies and ground some up for other dishes that he could then freeze. At least we checked the meat temperature as soon as the meat was found and decided if it was cooked first it could be re-frozen. I foresee a lot of steak in my future.

Start with a good layer of fruit, using all the fruits, but only half of them at this stage. Small fruits can be put in whole, whole grapes give a delightful pop when they're chilled, spilling cold, sweet juice into your mouth mid bite.

When they're all in the bowl I like to give them a good mix. This is because you end up with clumps of things otherwise. Mixed up you stand a chance of getting a little bit of each when it's served.

Pour all of your half set jelly over the fruits, pushing down into the jelly any that stick up out of it. While I was doing this Mr AB was busy stirring large quantities of Tuaca into the sponge cubes for me. He seemed to think there was nothing wrong with the sponge, so I was still mystified.

You can clearly see the solid bits of jelly at the bottom of the jug. Even a few minutes in the freezer can make a bad difference. I think I may use this method in the future, as the results were very good when we ate it the following day.

On top of your jelly you want half of your Tuaca soaked sponge cubes and then half of your cream, roughly spread round the bowl. This bowl is completely the wrong shape for trifle. Because it gets wider as you go the portions are going to be a little oddly shaped! It was, however, the only bowl I had available at the time, so it was used.

Ok, here comes the next shortcut - Sainsburys now do a lovely, pale, creamy, vanilla custard which is just perfect for a trifle. It is begging to be added to fruit and sponge and jelly. So I did. Then I added the second half of the fruits and the second half of the Tuaca soaked sponge squares. Those squares were very thirsty indeed!

Since I had forgotten the other half of the banana - did I mention I was exhausted? - I added it with the sponge.

A final layer of cream, topped with some delicious sprinkles and the obligatory Maraschino cherry, and we had trifle! Yay!

As you can see the layers of jelly and fruit at the bottom went well, but because of the V shape of the bowl the second layer is obliterated by custard and cream, but you can clearly see fruit, jelly, sponge and cream all at the bottom, then a luscious later of custard with more fruit in it.

This side of the bowl just looks like a fruit fest! You can just about make out the layering.

So - do we do the dishes, or do we sample it now? Yeah, like we really put it in the fridge until tomorrow!

The cherry on top

I guess we didn't do too much damage first night.

Although by morning it looked so good and smelled so good that himself had some for breakfast, declaring it delicious when the jelly was set.

And guess who he left the cherry for?

I do hope you try this recipe with your favourite liqueur or spirit, or even wine. Sherry and tinned fruit cocktail need never dog your nightmares again, and you'll see for yourself how quick and easy it is.

Oh, when did I realise about the baking powder? When I loaded the pictures into here and found I didn't have a photograph of adding any. But hey, it still wasn't a biscuit, right? It actually worked out very well, giving the sponge a firmness that the lady fingers have without that stale taste. Delicious! I should bake more like that. But only for trifle. It does go to show, though, how much air gets into that batter with the KitchenAid.

Tuaca Trifle (printable version)

For the sponge:
4oz or 100g unsalted butter
4oz or 100g golden caster sugar

2 eggs

4oz or 100g flour

2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
Scant quarter cup Tuaca

For the trifle:

Various ripe seasonal fruits. I used 1 banana, 2 peaches, 2 Victoria plums, half punnett cherries, punnett blueberries, punnett raspberries, punnett blackberries, half punnett seedless black grapes - all pitted, stalks removed, washed, chopped if necessary

1 pack of Hartleys lemon jelly, made up and chilled until half set
1 sponge, cut into cubes and soaked with Tuaca, as much as it will hold without getting soggy
500g tub Sainsburys Vanilla Custard
600ml tub double cream

To decorate:
Sprinkles or 100's and 1,000's
Maraschino cherry

Pre heat oven to 165ºC, 325ºF or gas mark 3. Grease and line an 8 inch sponge tin.

Beat the butter with a stand mixer until pale and fluffy. Add the sugar and let it mix until it regains its light texture. Break the eggs into a bowl and add them in one go. As soon as they are mixed in add the flour all in one go.

Once this is mixed to a batter add the vanilla, baking powder and Tuaca. Check the batter mix as you pour the alcohol, you don't want to make it too sloppy.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin and level the top, making sure you push the batter into the sides of the tin as you go. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes depending on your oven.

When cooked remove the sponge and allow it to cool in its tin for 20 minutes before taking it out and removing the paper from it. Let it cool completely.

Prepare your jelly according to the instructions on the packet and set in the freezer until half set.

Wash all your fruit and prepare it, chopping large fruits into sections or lumps and removing all stones and stalks. Small fruits can be left whole.

Using a comport or similar, tall, straight sided container, put half of all the fruits in the bottom of the bowl and mix them together.

Pour over the half set jelly and add half the sponge cubes. Put this dish in the fridge or freezer, depending on time allowances, and allow the jelly to set completely.

Retrieve the dish and add half the custard.

Spoon over half of the cream and spread it round the dish to cover as best you can.

Sprinkle over the remaining fruit, bar the banana, then cover with the rest of the custard.

Now use the remaining sponge and banana and then top with the remaining cream.

Decorate as wished.

Note: You can change the layers to suit yourself, but it is traditional to start with fruit and finish with cream. You can do just one set of layers, or you can do more layers if your dish allows for it. It really is an as you wish type of dessert.

Enjoy!

Not completely lost...

2012-07-26T22:24:00.002+01:00

I just had to take a small break to set up another blog, build a website for a friend and the thousand and one other things that had backed up. In good news there is going to be more to explore now with the addition of the second blog: fumblingfrenchchef.blogspot.com If you pop over there you can see lots of lovely French food and learn how to choose your kitchen knives. Over time it will help you understand the equipment you use, what it does, why we use the ingredients we do, How to choose the best ingredients and to show you the techniques that you will need to cook anything you want to.

When you add the liquid to this mix, at the end, it's worth taking off the splash guard and replacing it with a cloth. You need to keep the cloth loose and high so it doesn't get eaten by the whisk as it turns. It will, however, stop your entire kitchen being washed in a thing coating of coffee and cake mix.

Meanwhile, and getting back to this blog, a friend of mine, the lovely Andi, has started a website to raise money for charity selling the beautiful jewellery and charms that she makes and donating the profits to a different charity each month. I know how beautiful they are, and how well made, because I bought some recently. An amazing pendant and some charms for myself and a pendant and some earrings for a friends birthday.

Grease or spread with release up the sides as well as on the base so your parchment sticks all over and doesn't end up in the cake batter where you will struggle to get it all out.

If you'd like to buy something or just want to donate to the charity of the month you can find her at JazzAndiGems.com It was for Andi that I built the website, with the help of CoffeeCup software and hosting Not only do they offer free hosting and templates that you can adjust to suit your own needs, but they also offer free editing software and if you're getting into it all a bit deeper they have an amazing amount of CSS, HTML and other website building software. Their editors for Windows and OSX are worth their weight in gold!

Make sure you pour roughly even amounts into the two baking tins, if one or other is much larger it will be harder to put the whole thing together as a layer cake, and they will take very different cooking times, too.

Food! That's why you're really here, isn't it? That's also why I got a phone call from a dear friend asking if I could "just do a little sponge cake for her mother in law's birthday. She wasn't sure what sort and hubby was shouting behind her so I got her to hand him the phone. What we settled on was a rich, moist Devil's food cake with peanut butter frosting.

Even when covered with a cloth and the splash guard icing sugar + anything = MESS!

And if you're already dribbling into your keyboard, you're going to love this recipe!

Frosting time!

This cake is pure Americana at its very best. It's a recipe from the lovely Holly's blog, Phemomenon, where she broke it down into cup cakes - equally amazing! The very original can be found in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book.

One the frosting is pale and smooth it's time to add the peanut butter. Don't get smart at this point - you really *don't* want to use crunchy. I know it's tempting. It's tempting right up until the moment you go "I'll just pipe a border round the bottom to make it look nice". Don't do it. I've don't it, you don't have it.

Using sour cream and bicarbonate of soda to raise the cake results in something incredible - a cake batter that shoots up in the tin then gradually collapses back into the tin under its own weight. This means it's almost impossible to get that toothpick to come out clean, and in fact you don't even want to try that. My rule is to have no more than 1cm of stickiness on there and no liquid.

Make sure you beat that frosting as fast as you can - you need to get lots of air in there to make it light and fluffy.

It also gets a crusty top layer, so it's not going to bounce back for you, either. This cake is one of experience, trial and error. Once you've made it right you'll know what to look for next time. You'll also never buy another packet mix again.

This is not a dark frosting, it's pale and smooth and fluffy to go with the heaviness of the sponge.

Two lots of dark chocolate, one of them Belgian, ensure that this is not sweet or sickly. It has an intense flavour, from the sticky fudge bottom through the sponge middle of each layer and into the crispy crust.

There's a good reason why Mr AB calls it the Messy Bakery!

The frosting is light, fluffy, smooth and buttery with a gentle taste of peanut butter that compliments rather than smothers the cake. With only a pound of icing sugar to the pound and a half of butter and a cup and a half of PB this is not sugary or cloying, either.

The crust has suck down, the gooey bottom is clinging to the paper, and the thin layer of sponge in between is still rich and beautiful Not the pretties of cakes at this point, but just about the tastiest I've ever made!

All in all it is a very grown up cake that children will also adore. I have made this cake very successfully as cup cakes and topped them with my own Fluff based frosting, which went down very well with grown ups as much as the pink obsessed little girl they were made for! A few pearls on the strawberry pink frosting and some sparkly flowers and princess bits from my Cricut gave her a lovely treat for her birthday. Not to mention earning me a lot of asks for the recipes!

If you get your top well covered and levelled first it gives you a rough height guide before you start slapping the frosting on the sides. Take the frosting down, not up. You want to smooth it down and round and then sweep off the excess. It's much easier than the alternative!

One tip with this - whether cupcakes or tins - Do not fill more than one third. Because it rises so dramatically it can easily overflow and leave you with a cake crusted oven and empty cake cases. Trust me on this - I was the one steam cleaning my oven at one in the morning, fuming as I did so.

Don't skimp on the frosting, not between the cakes and not over the cakes. Make it good and thick, so if you are brave enough to use your fingers they sent into oodles of gooey stickiness at the same time as you bite into the moist sponge

Oh, and as you can see, I wrap the bowl of the mixer when I add certain ingredients, the photos kind of say it all on that point!

Smooth the cake over as best you can - depending on how hot your kitchen is you might be able to do a thin crumb coat to smooth and then put your cake in the fridge for a few hours to set it so you can achieve a perfect finish. But if you're short of time, the kitchen is hot, the day is sweltering, etc. then quite honestly you're better of saving your energy and just aiming for achievable rather than perfect.

I don't use canola/rape or vegetable oil, I stick to sunflower as being lighter than olive oil and a better oil than the alternatives suggested.

Sprayed gold and ready for chocolate rolls and gold balls to be applied.
Don't worry about the finish, you never will get this one perfect.

It's worth getting really good chocolate for this one, 70% or more solids. It does make a difference.

Time to transfer the cake using my heavyweight Nordic cake lifter.
Do not underestimate the weight or stickiness of this cake!

The cocoa I use for this is Bourneville, by Cadburys, as it is also a dark chocolate. Some cocoas add sugar to the mix or milk powders and such. This is just powdered chocolate.

Candles on and ready to go!

Having a bean to cup machine I use an Americano - 2 shots of espresso made up to a long coffee with water. I got a bit fed up with measuring it out in cups, so I calculated the amount by emptying the cups into my jug. It works out at about 333.33 ml, so that's what I use.

Golden buttercream from doing a quick retouch

For the English, confectioners sugar is icing sugar, and all-purpose flour is just plain flour.

And not just the cake was sprayed! Thank goodness this washes off of marble.

I didn't use the milk - which made the cats happy - mostly because the mix was already soft and sloppy. It didn't need the extra! Perhaps in Winter I'd use it, but right now the kitchen is warm enough to melt this frosting, so I skipped it.

My reward to myself when all was finished!

Devil’s Food Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting (Printable Version)

For the Cake:
6 oz best-quality unsweetened chocolate, coarsely shopped
2/3 cup vegetable or canola oil
2 2/3 cup sugar
1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup best-quality unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
¾ tsp kosher salt
2/3 cup sour cream
3 large eggs
1 1/3 cups hot strong brewed coffee (I just used hot water)

For the Peanut Butter Frosting:

1 pound confectioner’s sugar, sifted
1 ½ pounds unsalted butter, softened
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
3 Tbsp whole milk
1-1½ cup smooth peanut butter, at room temperature

Position a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350. Butter and flour two 9×2-inch round cake pans, Line each pan with a 9-inch round of parchment paper.

To Make the Cake

2. In the bowl, of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt, and mix well.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sour cream and eggs until smooth.

4. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture, and mix until combined. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the melted chocolate mixture and mix until combined. add the hot coffee (or water) in a stream, and mix until combined. (Again, scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.) The batter will be loose.

5. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cake pans. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack to cool in the pans for 25 minutes before turning out the layers onto the rack. Cool completely before finishing.

The baked layers may be stored tightly wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for 2 days. For longer storage, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 5 days, or freeze wrapped in plastic wrap and them aluminum foil for up to 2 weeks. Do not unwrap before thawing.

To Make the Frosting

2. Add the peanut butter and mix until combined. Use the frosting immediately, if possible. It may be stored in an airtight container at room temperature overnight, or in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Let the frosting come to room temperature and briefly rebeat it in the mixer before using.

Worth a Thousand Words...

2012-06-04T19:32:00.000+01:00

If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, then this one must also be worth about a thousand calories at least!

I was having a Polish evening for a much loved friend whose obsessions include potato salad and chocolate cake. Of course, it had to be done, didn't it? Pierogi fried in bacon and onion, Schnitzel (pork, not veal), Polish potato salad with lots of dill and pickles, Alsace chouxcroute - it was a meal that could only finish one way. If you discount the potential coronary!

Sacher Torte.

The friend in question, like myself, is allergic to apricots, so it meant making a slight twist to the recipe, but as you can see from above, the last of the slices she took home with her, and the fact that I don't have a photo of the original because it was tucked into so heavily, it was delicious

I can't claim the recipe, neither the original, nor the one I used, from a lovely person known only as Belgrade on the Nigella Lawson Community section of the website and who claims to have tried them all and finally perfected the Sacher Torte recipe. But I can claim the variation! Morello Cherry Sacher. This, therefore, is my recipe. And yes, I cheated on the glaze. Mine was from a professional tub of Brilliance Noir, which did a grand job since I didn't sieve the jam! Mine came from Keylink I corrected the English to a (hopefully) readable form, too.

Also - the suggestion on the original of 5 minutes whisking the egg whites on any of my mixers other than my arm - which I can no longer manage - would result in concrete. Stiff peak is my suggestion.

SACHER TORTE (Printable Version)

INGREDIENTS
180g unsalted butter
180g white caster sugar
8 egg whites
8 yolks
250g ground walnuts - if not available put 250g of walnuts through a food processor until finely processed
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
180g dark chocolate
450g or a jar of Morello Cherry jam

For the glaze:

200g dark chocolate
100g unsalted butter
1 tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon sugar

METHOD

Serves: 12-16 or more. It's very rich

Pre-heat the oven at 170 degrees or gas mark 3.

Prepare a 9 or 10 inch (25cm or so) baking tin with butter and paper on sides and base, or use a release compound such as Wilton Cake Release - no paper needed. Available from Lakeland Plastics and many other places.

With a stand mixer on a slow setting, mix together the 180g of butter (room temperature) and 180g of sugar untill creamy. Not just until mixed, but until pale, light and fluffy. Then add the egg yolks one by one while still mixing.

In another bowl, combine the baking powder, flour, cinnamon and walnuts. Add this dry mixture to the stand mixer at the lowest speed possible. I actually found it best to stop the mixer, dump in the dry mix, then set the bowl guard on it and set it going. No flour spillage! No spray!

Melt the 180g of chocolate and add it to the batter while still mixing at a low speed. In another bowl beat the 8 egg whites to firm peak stage with a pinch of salt.

Stop the stand mixer, and raise the head so you can add a third of the egg whites to the batter and mix them in slowly on your lowest setting. Then take your bowl off the stand and fold in the remaining eggs by hand. If you're not sure of the folding technique do look it up on YouTube, because you need to use the right movements to prevent squashing the eggs flat. This is part of your raising agent, the little bubbles of air are needed to help produce a light sponge despite the weight of the ground nuts and egg yolks.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for around 50-60 minutes. Check with a toothpick (it should come out clean from the very centre of the cake) to make sure it's cooked properly. Allow the cake to stand for 15 minutes before taking it out of the pan and cooling.

Meanwhile, sieve the jam to take out the lumps, or not, and heat it with about 2 to 4 tablespoons of water until it becomes a spreadable gell. Allow it to cool until it's gloopy enough to stick to the cake.

Turn the cake upside-down and cut it in half horizontally. Spread a thick layer, at least 2mm, of jam over the middle of the cake and put the other half back on. Now cover the top and sides of cake thickly with the jam. This is to prevent the glaze seeping into the cake.

Before you glaze the cake put it in the freezer for around 15 minutes (yes the freezer not the refrigerator).

TO MAKE THE GLAZE:

in a double boiler or on the stove melt the 200g chocolate+100g butter+1 tablespoon oil+ 1 tablespoon milk, and if you prefer it sweeter use a little sugar, too.

Place the cake on a rack or turntable over paper or a tray with sides and pour the glaze. Starting in the middle of the cake, pour about half the glaze. Using a spatula spread it evenly out to the edges of the cake. If you have a turntable this makes the job a LOT easier. When the top is covered and you are now tipping glaze over the edge of the cake pour over the rest, just over the edges. Then go round again with the spatula, smoothing and flattening the edges by running it round the side of the cake, not up and down. Gravity will do the up and down for you! Just keep the pallet knife or spatula straight and turn the turntable, it'll cover it smoothly for you.

If you wish, when you have finished, you can melt a little dark or white chocolate in a paper piping bag and write the word SACHER on the top, or put a couple of simple decorations on it in white chocolate or gold leaf.

Enjoy! :)

Cocoa B, Brilliance Noir, 4.4 pounds

www.europeanfoodservice.com

A Parcel From Japan!

2012-05-12T00:46:00.002+01:00

If you're one of those readers who's put off by lots of exclamation marks I apologise, the following blog is crammed full of them. Had you been in the room when the following occurred you would have seen them pouring off me as I exclaimed and squealed and squeaked my way through the events with unalloyed delight. I can only suggest that you try not to take too much offence at my excessive punctuation and try to join me in my enthusiasm.

One of the best feelings in the world is getting a gift in the post! Even better when you've ordered something special from a friend who has gone to all the trouble of wrapping it beautifully, putting it inside useful boxes and bags, tucking in little treats and special gifts for you, too!

My wonderful friend, Noriko, has an eBay shop that she uses to offer the delights of Japanese cuisine to those of us in the UK, and in America, too. I promise I'll put her details at the bottom of the blog, so you can order from her as well.

I had seen her advertising Sakura essence on eBay and was cheeky enough to ask if she would mind getting a few other bits for me. Being the lovely lady that she is, of course she immediately offered me both her list of Sakura products and an invitation to see her list of Yuzu products, too! (Yes, I have already sent her another order for her lovely Yuzu juices and peels.)

I had been hunting for Sakura essence after reading blogs by Chika at She Who Eats and Heather Baird's lovely Sprinkle Bakes blog and realising for the first time that I had a Japan shaped hole in my repertoire!

Noriko's lovely package was whisked up to me while I was napping after a few very fraught days full of stress and sleeplessness. I couldn't help but think the package simply seemed to behave like a bag. There was no other way of putting it. There was a flat bottom, smooth sides, and it just seemed to say "stand me up, please! So I did.

Biscuit, my baby British Blue, decided that of course I was going to need help with opening the packaging and doing the photographing, so before I could do anything much at all she came along to help me...

It really did take all my self control to stop from opening the package up there and then!

The first thing I found inside the package was a lovely Cherry Blossom pink and coffee coloured cool bag, just the right size for a lunch or a couple of tiny purchases when I'm out shopping and buy something that needs to be kept cold. What a delightful extra that I hadn't expected! So very thoughtful of Noriko. Then I opened the bag.

Oh wow! What an amazing and useful little box! Perfect for some of my baking bits, re-usable and wonderfully thoughtful. Again! I couldn't believe just how sweet Noriko was to do all this for me. She had already given me wonderful prices on the delights that I had ordered from her, and now all this generosity with the wrappings as well. I was speechless. But there was more...

Inside the lovely little box was a note, thanking me for my order and wrapping a gift in a pretty pink and purple bag for me! A gift on top of all this. I cannot ever get over how amazingly generous and wonderful Japanese people are when you place an order with them; but Noriko had gone above and beyond, she really had. This was like Christmas and birthdays all rolled into one. Everything in the box had been wrapped carefully in bubble wrap and high impact polystyrene sheet to protect it, and there were little Milky sweets popped into the tiny gaps, too. I felt incredibly spoiled.

My order had, of course, survived immaculately and I eagerly unwrapped each piece. Noriko had sent me a pack of pickled Sakura leaves, a block of sweet beans and jelly with Sakura flowers and leaves mixed into it, a precious bottle of Sakura essence, a jar of pickled Sakura blossoms, a sachet of powdered Sakura leaf and the Sakura flavour granules that you mix with rice to make Sakura Mochi. I was in Wagashi heaven!

This, for me, was the highlight of the package. A tiny bottle of pure essence of cherry blossom.

I quickly tore off the plastic cover and opened the bottle. Take everything you imagined cherry blossom could taste or smell like, and throw it away, it's wrong. Although light and floral this smells and tastes nothing like you would expect. I really cannot describe it as I have no reference in Western cuisine to compare it to, you can only try it for yourself. I had read the leaves were where most of the taste was to be found, and that the flowers were very light, but this stuff is amazing!

And a gift, too. Lovely Matcha au laite sticks and four tiny Milky sweets. Yes, I know there's only three there. I did say I was impatient! They were also delicious, even if it was my breakfast.

Now there's only one thing left to do - make something with it! Watch this space for more about my lovely parcels from Japan and the delicious things I'm going to be making with them.

If you'd like to buy from Noriko, you can find her shop on eBay here: http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/ednoriko2012/&_trksid=p3984.m1435.l2754

Or you can email her direct at no.edahiro@gmail.com

Feel free to ask about any Japanese product, and she will give you her very best price - but I cannot promise she will be as generous in her packaging to you as she is to me! She is, after all, a very special friend of mine.

To Noriko - thank you! Domo arigato! Your generosity is very much appreciated.

Hang on, I'll read that again!

2012-04-20T08:24:00.002+01:00

Banana Cake topped with cream cheese frosting
and yellow banana sprinkles.

We all do it. The day we use a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon when we've used the same recipe for years; hearing one thing when someone says something completely different; reminding everyone else about something then forgetting it ourselves. I guarantee there isn't a person alive who hasn't at some point had a mental blip, a senior moment, a temporary glitch in the matrix or whatever else you may want to call it. That split second where the brain decides it's taking a vacation just in time to completely screw up whatever it is that you're doing. Well thanks to my health issues right now I have them all the time.

This one, however, was fortuitous. I was making and baking with a couple of helpers for a DPAC charity event themed on bananas, monkeys, gorillas and peanuts. Yes, you're right, I don't really want to see any more of any of them for a while! 18 kilos of bananas, 2 kilos of monkey nuts, vast quantities of chocolate, cocoa and brown sugar, not to mention the peanut butter and the constant dilemma of smooth or crunchy? Big clue - never try to pipe crunchy with a star tip. Been there, done that, *interesting* result. One of those "oh, so *that's* why they say smooth" kind of interesting results.

Banana Cake Pops - chocolate cake with chocolate frosting made into a pop ball,
dipped in white chocolate with yellow banana sprinkles.

By day 3 I was already running on low having had one night of insomnia closely followed by a night of working until half past one in the morning because my cake wouldn't cook! Ok, so I chose to do a triple quantity of a cake that baked at a very low temperature for a long time. It wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't decided to put it in the oven at 9-o-clock at night only to find that it simply refused to cook in the given time. Half past one it finally let me drag my tired and sorry backside off to bed. The next morning was not going to be fun.

Wrapped and ready to go in cellophane bags with yellow ribbon.

I had set an alarm. Actually, I had set three and promptly slept through the first two! So now it's almost mid-day, my helpers are due any time now and I still haven't had coffee, let alone set foot outside the bedroom door! I limped downstairs and eyed the semi clean kitchen. At least all that time last night had been put to good use while I waited for the cake to cook, but I was still running behind. Right! Monkey Bread, with banana and without banana. How hard can it be? I refer you to the first paragraph...

I was jumping between 3 recipes, because one of them used yeast, which I wasn't going to do, one of them was baked in a jar, again not happening, and one of them used bananas. Of course! Ok, make a mix of dark and light brown sugars. Done. Add cinnamon. Done. Make biscuits. Not British biscuits. We're not talking about a thin, crisp wafer of sugary goodness here. We're talking about a thick, scone like savoury bread as served with gravy in America. Aha! I can take a shortcut! Bisquick. God's gift to the busy cook - admittedly I have my own, home made Bisquick, which is nicer, but it does the exact same job. Measure out four batches worth of Bisquick, add remaining ingredients, stir, knead, cut. Perfect!

The quickly disappearing Dutch Peanut Cookies - I had to make an extra batch for at home
and more for the stall after eating half a batch on cake watch...

Now, watch closely. One recipe said go right on and break the biscuits into 4 and roll in the sugar and spice mix. Another said use refrigerated biscuits. Enter brain fog stage left to ensure that logic dictates if they're refrigerated or broken they must be baked first, right? Right????

It was about batch 3 coming out of the oven and batch 4 going in that I started to have my doubts. I went back and re-read the recipes which said nothing about cooking the biscuits. Then again it said nothing about cooking the Graham Crackers before you make a Key Lime Pie base, either! Puzzlement ensued, brow was furrowed, and eventually I looked at the pictures and realised that it had done it to me again. Thank goodness I know how to make scones! I reached for the self raising flour, added butter, added milk and sugar and stirred for all I was worth - which wasn't very much by this point I have to add. Scone mix made, torn into bits, rolled into a bowl of sugar and spice and tossed into metal trays for adding of bananas or just sprinkling and baking.

Devil's Food Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting Cupcakes - these were first to sell out!

Ok, that was those done. But what the heck was I going to do with 4 batches of fresh baked biscuits? Have you ever seen just how much cooked biscuit is actually involved in 4 batches? It's what the British would serve to a family of 8 x 4 batches, and that's if they have 2 each. One of my biggest bug bears is wasting food I will *not* allow this much good food go in the bin, so I started thinking while I got on with other things like replacing the Dutch peanut cookies that I had previously nibbled on while I cleaned and watched cake not baking.

About those mallow fingers, I must post a recipe some time. It's vegan marshmallows, made, then melted so you still get the fluffiness in there. Mixed with white chocolate and shaped. Once they were set I covered them in stripes of white chocolate just for some extra chocolateness. Really easy and delicious, too. One lady bought the lot.

My love of inventing combined with my having read pretty much every antique cookbook I could ever lay my hands on (including Mrs Beaton's Household Management) leapt to the rescue. I re-mixed the sugars and cinnamon, added a cup or two of water and set this on the stove to boil. Meanwhile, I tore up the biscuits and put them in a couple of big mixing bowls. The syrup was poured over the biscuits and pounded together with the bread, but it wasn't enough, the mix was still dry. Not to worry, I have lovely mushy banana over here that's practically nectar, so that went over and was stirred in; still dry bits. Finally I emptied in a couple of cartons of buttermilk that I had bought in an "I'm not sure if I need these but just in case" moment the previous day. There, perfect! I left it all to soak for a while.

Banana cup cakes with banana frosting.

When I was a child there was a wonderful confection made in pretty much every house at some point or other, and always on sale at the bakers. It made use of stale bread (not the scraping the mould off type, just the it's a little too dry even to toast type), milk, dried fruit, mixed spices and sugar. The bread was soaked in milk overnight - a technique that goes back to pre-Tudor times at least - then squeezed out and mixed with spices, dried fruit and sugar before being sprinkled with more sugar and baked. It used relatively expensive ingredients to jazz up something that would otherwise have been thrown away to make a dense, sweet slab of confection known as Bread Pudding. Unlike its fancy relative, Bread and Butter Pudding, this was a heavy, solid thing, known to keep out the cold, put hairs on chests and no doubt many other things. I have a sneaking suspicion it may also have been used as a poultice! But for all that it was a cheery thing, hot or cold, and full of sweetness and spice. Perhaps the only reason it survived to the 21st Century.

Before we started - bags of mallow fingers with white chocolate, stuffed monkeys and monkey lollies, cupcakes in pink boxes and pate de fruit with monkey bread and more banana bread.

Taking up a batch of smaller foil dishes I dished out the batter, tapping it down well and liberally covering the top of it with more sugar and spice, and using up some peanuts on top of half the dishes (we had plenty to spare at that stage). A quick look at temperatures for bread pudding and off the dishes went into the oven.

My first helper of the day arrived and sniffed the air excitedly, dropping loud and heavy hints about being available as a test candidate. The bread pudding having not long come out of the oven I handed him a dish of the stuff and told him he was the guinea pig for the day! Around about mouthful two or three he muttered "if himself ever gets bored with you, you know where I am" and he shuffled off, focussed on his dish of pudding to avoid losing any to me and my tasting spoon!

More views of the confectionary and cakes available with the largest of the banana cakes in the corner followed by smaller ones with chocolates and cookies in bags.

Oh well, at least it was a success! It sold well, too, along with slabs of banana cake covered in cream cheese frosting, banana cake pops, chocolate monkeys filled with a mixture of marshmallow, peanut butter, grape jelly and banana, monkey lollypops, chocolate bananas and banana chocolates, banana pate de fruit, banana cake with walnuts and rum soaked sultanas (from Nigella), devils food cake cupcakes frosted with peanut butter frosting and shiny yellow frosted banana cupcakes, banana mallow fingers with white chocolate (declared the nicest vegan white chocolate the lady had ever eaten no less, peanut cookies, sugar cookies in banana and monkey face shapes, chocolate and peanut butter flavours and even banana flavour hot chocolate on a stick in a choice of white or dark chocolate. The monkey bread (with or without banana) was a great success, too!

Before the event, on the left were the Nigella banana cakes, then the banana cake with cream cheese slabs (the large containers) and the puddings - with or without peanuts and the banana cake pops.

I have to admit, I did set one aside for myself to enjoy after the fair was over and some semblance of normality had returned. I swear, you'd think it was a proper recipe, not just a quick rescue! It was just what I needed, too; a winter pudding for a rainy night when all you want is comforting spices and nursery food. It went down obscenely well with a large G&T!

I'm sharing my recipe below for those of you brave enough to try it. Just read the instructions carefully and bear in mind that the ingredients are more *ish* than precise. Feel free to tweak it! The cups were just convenient given that the Bisquick recipe was in cups, they were to hand when I wanted an equal quantity and half that quantity.

Banana Biscuit Pudding (Printable Version)

Ingredients:
1 batch Bisquick biscuits as per the box, cooked until pale but risen, cooled and broken into pieces
Half a cup soft dark brown sugar
Half a cup soft light brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 cups water
2 bananas very well smashed and if possible frozen overnight and defrosted (it helps get the juice out)
quarter to half a pint of buttermilk

To finish:
Half a cup of soft dark brown sugar
Half a cup of soft light brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Method:

Mix together the sugars and spice with the water in a heavy based pan and put on the stove top with a medium heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Leave it then to come to the boil for 1 or 2 minutes.

Pour the syrup over the broken biscuits and stir well. Add the banana and mash completely into the mixture. The buttermilk should be added until the mix resembles wet concrete - not very attractive, I'll admit, but it's the closest approximation I can think of! You want it to move, almost like a cake batter, yet be wet and solid at the same time. You don't want any dry pieces. If you have any add a bit more buttermilk, or if that is finished, just plain milk will do until it all comes together into a smoothish batter with no biscuits evident. When you spoon it into a pie dish or similar you want it to land in soft lumps, but be capable of settling and smoothing when you tap the container down on the counter a few times. Fill your dishes no more than two thirds, as even now the pudding has a little puffing up to do with all the steam it is going to generate. Mix together the last of the sugars and spice and sprinkle thickly over the top of the pudding. Bake at 180C/160C for fan ovens or 350F/320F for fan ovens, or Gas Mark 4 for between 75 and 90 minutes until firm to the touch and brown on top. A cake tester should come out clean. Let it cool for about 30 minutes or so and serve at room temperature, cut into slices or squares.

Some people like it hot, some like it cold, some with custard, it's your choice. Some recipes suggest soaking the bread in water and using an egg, but I always found that milk worked just fine in the original, and the syrup seems to have negated the need for any egg to richen the pudding!

Jumping through hoops for Technocrati! D27VTNCG28F7

2012-04-12T16:45:00.002+01:00

D27VTNCG28F7

From small beginnings

2012-04-01T15:55:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the blog, and indeed my very purple kitchen after which it is named. Amazing Bakery started many years ago as a whimsical thought on a dull day. A picture of a pretty bakery full of the most delicious pastries and treats, cakes that were sculpted and shaped like they never had been before. A divorce from the world of frumpy fruit cakes and stolid icing. Two foot tall dinosaurs and pink castles rising up from the fondant, dressed in flowers and fronds. Unfortunately real life rather got in the way and the bakery was put on hold for far too long.

But dreams are not so easily forgotten, and slowly, like a princess waking from a one hundred year sleep, the dream is rising again. I have never forgotten my training, nor has my love of food and in particular pastries and cakes waned in the slightest. This time real life was the trigger for events. In 2010 I fell ill with Viral Meningitis. Not the nicest of things to endure, and certainly not something I would recommend. But this illness was to prove a massive turning point. Not least of all because I collapsed and ended up in the Intensive Treatment Unit of my local hospital spitting out a lot of tubes. It was scary, and it took me a while to shake off the whole having had my brain boiling in my skull thing, but that was not to be the end of it. Sadly Viral Meningitis is an enterovirus. As we now are starting to understand enteroviruses are the start of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Or ME as we more commonly call it. My life was in tatters. I slept at odd hours, I ran out of energy just climbing the stairs, I shook, twitched, panted and gasped and my whole world as I knew it fell away from me.

In rapid succession I found out who my friends were and that I could not live my life as I had previously done. I had to pace myself, I had to allow for days when I could do nothing, sometimes weeks or months where I was too exhausted to do more than sleep. I had to realise that if I spent energy I had to either save it up first or pay for it afterwards, and pay the hard way at that. Obviously this was never going to be a tolerable situation for an employer, and I hardly blamed them.

But it was from these shards that the idea rose again. A bakery. Not a shop, but now that the internet was everywhere (yes, I am that old) one that was in my own home. I had moved house to the coast shortly before I fell ill and one thing that simply wouldn't work was what had been left me in the form of a kitchen. Old oak cabinets that were badly hung, greasy and worn, slashed about pieces of worktop and half ripped up laminate flooring. It had to go. A dear friend who had recently redone her own kitchen pointed me at B&Q, my local DIY store, and within it we found an amazing purple kitchen. Deep purple draws and pull out cupboards that made storage easy and accessible. Coupled with fuchsia glass cabinets lit from within, black Metro tiles on putty coloured walls, sparkly black marble worktops and a new range cooker I was in kitchen heaven.

The dream was coming alive again; I could see myself in there, cooking up a storm. And best of all it could be as small or as large as I could cope with. I could work on things at my own speed, decide which orders I wanted to take depending on how my energies were balanced, it was going to be perfect! And it is...

So, if you'd like to follow me on the rest of the journey, as I build my business brick by tiny brick with a lot of naps in-between, then tag along. Amazing Bakery has a Twitter at @AmazingBakery and a website at AmazingBakery.co.uk which will be up and running very soon. All I can say is, watch this space! And let's hope it's all upwards and onwards from here!