Thursday's challenge

Matt, my husband, had requested no more cake until August 10th. I was a bit disappointed but was happy enough to encourage him in a mini-health kick; it would just have to be inventive salads for a few weeks. But I was thrilled when my friend Katie requested a bake to celebrate her birthday.

Katie doesn't live close to me, but a happy coincidence meant that I would have the chance to see her just a couple of days after her birthday. The challenges of this bake were:

1. Katie had requested something chocolaty (not very restrictive) 
2. I would have transport the bake on a 4 hour, 2 change train trip across south west England (more restrictive) 
3. I left myself with limited time to make the bake due to a late finish at work and lots to do the night before the aforementioned train trip (not as restrictive as it should have been).

I decided that brownies would be the thing. The chocolate criteria would definitely be met plus they are not delicate and don't require icing so would be ok for the transport restrictions. I wasn't sure about the time thing. The brownies I usually make are gluten free, require significant separation of eggs and are not that quick. I wanted to try something different, probably with white chocolate. I felt reasonably confident that I could find something suitable. I also had it in mind that I wanted to use cranberries, in the belief that I had a pack at the back of the baking cupboard.

I found a few recipes for white chocolate brownies (I think the trendy name for these is blondies) and chose the one that looked both easiest and most adaptable for my requirements.

I made a start and swiftly realised that I had less than 50g of the 400g of white chocolate that I needed. On further inspection the main bake only required 300g; the rest was for chocolate chunks. Fortunately Matt was keen for a break from his DIY so took a walk to the local shop to get some white chocolate while I made a start on the tea.

The first phase was to melt the (300g) chocolate with 75g of butter. I was a bit worried about this because the only proper butter we had was the stuff that smelt like cheese, but I tasted a little bit that was left on the knife that I had portioned it with and it didn't taste at all cheesy. Very weird.

Once this has melted the recipe states that you should allow it to cool and then mix in the eggs (3, which was lucky as that's all we had) and sugar (90g) and vanilla. But I didn't fancy my chances of mixing in the bowl that I had melted. So instead I pre-whisked the eggs, sugar and vanilla and then whisked the butter / sugar into this. I wasn't really sure if I should have whisked or mixed with a spoon but whisking seems more efficient.

Next I added 200g plain flour. Since I already had the whisk out I thought I may as well whisk this in too. Finally it was time to add the chocolates chunks and cranberries. I decided to use plain chocolate here. And what I thought was a bag of cranberries was actually a mixed bag of raisins, sultanas and cranberries, but this wouldn't really matter. I laid off the whisk for these final additions and stirred gently instead.

The recipe said to pour the mixture into a lined baking tray. As time goes by I am becoming less and less convinced about lining baking trays so I just greased it thoroughly and hoped for the best.

A significant challenge with brownies is that you can't use the skewer test to see if they're cooked as they're supposed to be a bit gooey in the middle. The recipe said to bake for 20 minutes, but obviously every oven is different. I think mine were in for a bit longer than this, just until the top looked a little bit cracked.

It would have to wait until the morning to be chopped and removed / chiselled out of the tray, I still had my packing to do and it was only 10 minutes until bedtime.

Fortunately the copious greasing was satisfactory and the brownies packed beautifully into a tin ready for transportation (with one little bit left for Matt - his health kick isn't that extreme!). 

And they made the journey ok. It was lovely to see Katie, and I think she and her baby girl both enjoyed the brownies (although the baby did seem determined to put the whole lot on the floor). A few crumbs were dropped on the ground which were dealt with by my mother-in-law's Yorkshire Terrier - I just hope it doesn't poison him as I think that both chocolate and dried fruit are bad for dogs. I suppose if it does poison him there are worse ways to go.

Sunday's topsy turvy cake

My parents arrived for the weekend on Friday night. The culinary inevitabilities would include pizza (always when there are guests), soup (Dad loves this and it probably explains his envy inducing slimness) and bread and cheese (the rest of us love this and it probably explains our non-slimness). And the temporary swelling of household numbers would also be a good excuse for a nice piece of cake.

Saturday was a busy day in the garden, and by the time we had cleaned it and ourselves up and taken my mother-in-law’s Yorkshire terrier for an evening walk at the beach (once all the tourists had gone home), there was no time for cake making. Especially as I wanted to indulge a bit in my favourite fruit based word game.

By the time Sunday came around cake was very clearly on mine and my husband Matt’s mind. We prepared ourselves with a swim, our first since holiday. I felt very out of shape and if I’m going to make a habit of cake making I’m going to need to put a bit more vigour into my lengths than I did yesterday.

Matt was keen that I use up:

1) a large quantity of desiccated coconut. I have no idea how we’ve got so much as I don’t ever remember buying any

2) some cherries preserved in some sort of continental spirit which were opened a while ago in error and have since been sat unused in the fridge

Both were well past their “best-before” dates. I inspected the cherries. As predicted they were fine, they are after all preserved in alcohol and will probably last almost forever. I tasted the coconut. I have no idea what gone-off coconut would taste like, but it too seemed fine. So I was left with the dilemma of whether to try and combine these two ingredients (there must be weirder combinations than coconut and cherry), use one of them (and save the other for another day), or bake something entirely unrelated to either.

My preferred thought to deploy the cherries in a Black Forest gateau. I’ve always wanted to go there to eat this in situ, although I think I might actually be disappointed and find that the Black Forest gateau is something invented in England in the 1970s and has nothing to do with the Black Forest. But at 7pm on a Sunday there was no whipping cream to be had in our local convenience store (not so convenient if you need whipping cream) and I thought that spray cream wouldn’t create the desired effect. So I decided to keep the cherries for another day and use the coconut.

I think that coconut on its own is a bit boring and was thinking about making a pineapple upside down cake with coconut sponge. A kind of baked pina colada. But I also had cake-stand full of almost over ripe nectarines and kiwis that I was no way going to be able to eat in the conventional way before they started to ferment. This called for a multi-fruit topsy turvy cake with coconut sponge.

So I arranged the nectarines and kiwis in the bottom of a big tin. It didn’t look like quite enough fruit so I added some of my bargain tinned strawberries. I was worried that it was all a bit wet so sprinkled over some brown sugar, resisted the urge to add coconut liqueur and put the lot in the oven at a lowish temperature to evaporate and caramelise a bit.

In the meantime I had to make the sponge. Since I could not find a suitable recipe for coconut sponge it would have to be somewhat improvised. It would be an improvisation on my mum’s trusty 6,6,6,3,3,3 cake, only these are in imperial measurements and I prefer metric. So:

1) 150g butter (or butter substitute) and 150g sugar creamed together

2) 3 eggs, beaten and added one at a time with a tablespoon of flour with each one (I’ve no idea if this flour thing is really necessary but recipes always tell you to do this)

3) 150g flour, added gradually so as to make sure it doesn’t get too try (I think maybe the flour you add with the eggs is supposed to come out of the 150g but I forgot to weigh that)

4) 50g desiccated coconut, stirred in. I was cautious with this as I didn’t want to dry the mixture out but 50g didn’t seem to go very far so I added another 50g.

I poured this over the slightly cooked fruit and returned the whole lot to a hotter oven (about 180°C) and baked for about 30 minutes. I didn’t really know how long to bake for but it was looking brown after this long and the skewer test confirmed that it was at least not raw.

My mum declined my offer to drink the syrup that the strawberries had come in but rather than waste is suggested that I could turn it into a sauce. I thought that this might be overly sweet so added some orange juice and zest and set over the hob to reduce. It didn’t appear to be reducing at all and after about 10 minutes I lost patience and threw in a spoonful of corn flour. Mum then gave me a corn flour tip: mix it up with a small amount of water first. But it was too late and I spent the next 15 minutes removing lumps of corn flour. But I added another spoonful in the manner advised by my mum and the sauce duly thickened.

It was one of those bakes that I dread removing from the tin; I was concerned about major cake / fruit separation and didn’t dare risk an intermediate cooling rack between the tin and the serving plate. Amazingly it all held together and looked almost like something out of a French patisserie.

We served it (after soup and bread and cheese) with the sauce, and some spray cream for good measure. It was very delicious and despite all the coconut I had added nice and moist. There’s still half left but because of all the fruit I don’t think it’ll keep very long. Oh well, that’s lunch sorted.

Thursday's thursdaes (and other things)

After work today I didn’t really feel like going for a swim. But Matt, my husband, said “let’s go now” and since he was showing unusual enthusiasm I thought I’d better not make any excuses.

My previous swim had been on Monday and had been cut short by a small boy vomiting in the pool. So today I was of the opinion that if I was going to make the effort to get into the pool I should make up for that short swim with a long one. Matt was not of the same opinion and I noticed at about 80 lengths that he had got out. I am a very antisocial swimmer and swim with an MP3 player so am basically oblivious to what is going on around me. This proved to be hazardous on Monday when I failed to notice that the lifeguards had cleared the pool following the vomiting incident until one of them tapped me on the head. Fortunately Matt was still in the changing room after I had made my 100 length target so I was not forced into even more physical exertion with a walk home.

It was quite late by the time we got in, but after all that exercise I felt pretty hungry. Something quick and filling was called for: jacket potatoes or pasta. (We have a microwave with a jacket potato function which kind of half-microwaves-half-bakes the potatoes so that they are done really nicely in about a quarter of an hour.) Since we had no jacketing potatoes pasta it would be.

I made a quick kind of bolognese sauce. In a household that doesn’t eat meat it will only ever be a kind of bolognese sauce. Today’s variant was:

- A large onion, 2 sticks of celery, 3 carrots - all chopped up and fried until soft. Sometimes I also add mushrooms and / or peppers here but we had none. I would also usually put in garlic, but we only had smoked garlic. When I went to get some for chopping it was quite evident that it was past its best. Which is unsurprising, I suppose, given that I’d imported it from the Isle of Wight last August.

- Vegetarian mince, added until browned a bit. We had half a bag in the freezer which was ideal.

- A tin of plum tomatoes. It wasn’t until after I’d added them that I realised that they weren’t chopped. Usually I use scissors in the tin to chop non-chopped tinned tomatoes but today I had to undertake the slightly trickier task of chopping in the pan. The tricky bit is avoiding the non-stick surface of the pan.

- Some (probably about 100ml) red wine (which I rinsed the tomato tin out with). A spoonful of vegetable stock powder. A spoonful of yeast extract. Some Worcestershire sauce could have replaced either one of those. I have found that using all three on one occasion is excessive.

You can simmer away for quite a long time if you like, but hunger dictated that it would be a less mature kind of bolognese this evening. Matt kept an eye on it and got the pasta ready (fusilli today) while I made some cookies.

These were very simple: butter, sugar, flour, egg, vanilla and chocolate. The recipe said that I should mix it with a wooden spoon but I figured I would use the electric whisk. I have been having some problems with my elbow (if it’s possible to get tennis elbow from swimming I think that might be it) so wanted to avoid manual labour if possible. The electric whisk was fine. 

The main hazard I found in the preparation of the cookies was the presence of a small dog. We are taking care of my mother-in-law’s Yorkshire terrier, Fred, for a week. I have been led to understand that dogs should not eat chocolate - apparently it can kill them. The chocolate for the cookies had to be “roughly chopped”. Fred is always around your feet when there’s anything to do with food going on and the process of chocolate chopping inevitably results in some chocolate dust finding its way to the floor. Matt said not to worry too much and pointed out the time, Christmas 2011 I think, when he managed to get his way into and lick away a not insignificant quantity of premium dark chocolate. He was fine then and 2 hours after today’s chocolate consumption seems to be none the worse for it.

The cookies baked while we ate dinner. I wanted to put some cheese on it but the small amount of (open) remaining cheddar had grown a fur coat so I thought better of it. There will be some lucky birds getting that cheese tomorrow. Rather than opening a new cheese Matt challenged me to eat dinner cheeseless. And do you know? I don’t think it was any the worse for the absence of dairy. I was somewhat shocked when I returned from the kitchen having removed the cookies from the oven to find Matt feeding Fred veggie bolognese from a fork.

Since the cookies would have to cool before we could go to be and it would be nice to digest the pasta bit before bed I decided to have a bit of pudding – very rare for a week night. I’d bought some strawberries a few days ago (out of season I know but they smelt lovely) and it was about time that they were eaten up. I’m going away for the weekend and it would be unlikely that Matt would choose them himself. My first thought had been to serve them with some spray cream but as I was rinsing them I had the idea of making strawberry sundaes: the above with the addition of some vanilla ice-cream and sprinkles. I would have added some fruity sauce too if we had some. Our ice-cream thursdaes were devoured.

The cookies did the usual thing of spreading out whilst baking and joining up to each other. I refuse to use more baking trays to prevent this so my cookies are likely to always be slightly non-round. Most of the cookies are for sharing with my friends this weekend but one of them broke in the process of removal from the baking tray so it seemed only prudent to test it. Matt approved, but he generally does of sweet things.

They’ve packed up nicely into a two tier sandwich box (I partially chose cookies for ease of transportation); and now I just await the verdict of a broader jury.