Saturday's gateau

After a modicum of deliberation Matt, my husband, decided that the cake that he would like to celebrate his birthday was a black forest gateau. This would mean that the cherries preserved in kirsch could finally be deployed, although candles would prove tricky.

I didn't underestimate the difficulty / time rating of this so Matt went out to do the shopping for his birthday luncheon while I stayed at home to do the baking. If this turned out to be less taxing than I suspected it could always be interspersed with gardening (hopefully), other aspects of food preparation(ok), or household chores (although not if I could avoid it).

I searched my recipe books and cuttings for suitable recipes. There were only two and one of them required me to sieve butter which seemed ridiculous so I went with the other one. I could tell that this was going to be a recipe that created extreme amounts of washing up. But still, it was a special occasion. And we do have a dishwasher.

To start with you have to melt some butter (I used butter substitute as I didn't want to risk the butter that smelt like cheese on such a critical bake) with sugar, chocolate and coffee. The recipe stated 200g of plain chocolate. I used a whole 150g bar and half a 100g bar. Yet the scales told me that this was 216g. So either the scales were wrong or the chocolate was wrong. I decided to give the chocolate the benefit of the doubt (I might revert to analogue scales once I've conducted a few experiments to see if the digital ones really are dubious) as 16g too much chocolate was likely to be less detrimental than 16g too little.

Then you have to wait until this is cool before adding the rest of the ingredients. This gave me time to do something that I don't usually bother with - sifting. Maybe I had sifting on the mind after I'd declined to sieve butter. For the first time in my life (I think) I did a recipe that used both plain and self-raising flour and it seemed to me important that they were properly mixed (along with the cocoa powder).

The chocolate mixture still didn't seem very cool to me so I had a pause in baking and potted up some tomato plants. I just love the smell of tomato plants.

Mixing the gateau

On returning to the kitchen I whisked the sifted ingredients into the (now cooled) chocolate mixture. It was a good job I had an apron on as it splashed all over the place. And then you whisk 2 eggs in - I suppose the reason you have to let the chocolate mixture cool is so that you don't scramble the eggs.

The recipe indicated that you should pour the mixture into a large tin to bake, and that you then slice it up for your layers. But I am useless at slicing (as evidenced by the frequent mess I make of slicing up bread) and decided that the safer course of action would be to bake the layers separately. I dug around in the tin cupboard and found three the same size and ladled three ladles into each. There was still some mixture left over so I got another tin out (slightly smaller) and poured that in to make a potential 4th layer.

Oven mess

One of the pitfalls of this type of runny cake mixture is that it leaks through the bottom of loose bottomed tins. So I got a bit of chocolatey mess on the worktop (not really a problem) but some also dripped onto the bottom of the oven - I am unlikely to be able to delay the cleaning of the oven for much longer.

The benefit of baking in smaller tins was that it would take less time (I am an impatient cook), the disadvantage was that I had no long how long it would take. So I had to stay close to the oven and this meant that really I had to do some household chores. After about an hour the cakes started to smell cooked and the skewer test confirmed this to be the case. I whisked up a tub of cream but was wise enough not to do any gateau assembly until it had completely cooled. In the meantime I chopped up some veggies to have raw. We needed some healthy food of some sort. 

I had no intention of following the recipe for the filling / stacking, which required me use normal jarred cherries and to thicken the juice with arrowroot. Instead I planned to use a combination of the kirsch, followed by cherry jam (of which, after my first application of kirsch, I discovered we had none - fortunately Matt was still at the shops so I was able to direct him to a suitable product), followed by cream, followed by the cherries themselves. My rationale was that the kirsch would flavour the sponge, the jam would make the cream stick to the sponge and the cherries could then be nestled into the cream. 3 layers looked precarious enough so I didn't risk the 4th. Instead I would fashion this into something for the youngsters we were expecting. 

One layer

3 layers

We all had to wait a while before trying out the completed gateau. I was successful in persuading the youngsters that they wouldn't like it and they seemed to be quite happy with their chocolate hazelnut spread filled sponges. As predicted candles were off but we did all sing 'happy birthday', accompanied by the musical cake slice. Between six grown-ups we devoured half the gateau - some people with considerably larger portions than others. I had a small to moderate sized piece and was overwhelmed by it. So rich, so boozy and so delicious but I wouldn't have managed it it if hadn't have been for the nice pot of tea that we had with it. Being full of fresh cream I wasn't optimistic for the gateau's survival beyond another 24 hours at most. Fortunately our guests were only too keen to take home a party bag.

Half down, half to go

Where to start?

Thursday's birthday baking

In keeping with tradition, Matt, my husband, planned to take some high energy feed to his workmates to help celebrate his birthday. This plan mostly involved me constructing said high energy feed. Matt's requests were for paradise slice and oatcake and being the good wife that I am, after a short effort to try to persuade him that something more cakey might be nice I acquiesced and set to on these two tray bakes. 

The oatcake is a recipe of my mum's. It's not the healthy sort of oatcake on which you might apply cheese, rather it consists of equal parts of sugar / syrup, butter / butter substitute, plain flour and oats. I used 150g of each. The sugar / syrup combination I selected was 100g golden caster sugar and 50g golden syrup. It also works with any other type of sugar and any other type of syrup (e.g. black treacle or molasses if you want to add a tiny bit of nutrition) in any proportions. 

1. Melt the butter / butter substitute and the sugar / syrup together over a low heat. I did this on the hob but you can do it carefully in the microwave. The microwave is my mum's preferred option but I'm not really careful enough. 

2. Stir in the flour and the oats. At this point you can add some spice or dried fruit or anything else you fancy. I wanted to keep it fairly simple today (the paradise slice would be the thing for Matt's more gastronomically adventurous colleagues) so added just a little mixed spice (not to be confused with allspice). I would have added cinnamon but shockingly I could not locate any in the kitchen.

3. Press it into a tin. I lined it on this occasion but really, if it's a non-stick tin you probably don't need to.

4. Bake at 180˚C for about half an hour. 

 

The basic oatcake

That would usually do but since this was a celebration I decided to top it with some chocolate. 

5. Melt some chocolate (I used a 150g bar of milk chocolate) using whatever method works for you. The only method I have ever found that works for me is over a pan of boiling water. I added a little bit of butter because I've seen them do this on the television

6. Spread the melted chocolate over the oatcake.

 

Chocolate covering

And maybe I could have stopped there but this was a celebration so I decided to finish off with some sprinkles. Matt was keep to apply these and since I am generally quite clumsy with the application of decoration I let him take charge of the pot of coloured sugar strands (it was his birthday after all).

 

Adding the finishing touches

I made the paradise slice while the oatcake was baking. This was basically a reprise of what I made a few weeks ago as sustenance for a team building event. I did the old classic of not having the butter soft enough before creaming it with the sugar and duly made a terrific mess all over the work surface. But most of it stayed in the bowl.  I was a bit worried as a did this bit as it smelt of cheese (I love cheese but this was out of context). It is possible that the butter was a little past its best before but it had been unopened in our very cold fridge. So I tasted just a little bit (it tasted more of butter/sugar than cheese) and carried on.

 

The paradise mix

We resisted the temptation to test the creations last night and sliced them up for transportation to Matt's work this morning. We saved the slightly dud bits for ourselves (the bit of the oatcake where the greaseproof paper didn't come off properly and the disintegrated bit of the paradise slice).

Ready for feeding

The bits that I might get to eat

The feedback from the engineering gannets (as Matt refers to his workmates on occasions such as this) was good. Apparently the lack of cinnamon wasn't noticed in the oatcake. And apparently the other was "truly a slice of paradise" (someone genuinely said this!).

So all that remains now is to make the birthday cake proper. 

Tuesday's cherry bumpers

The concept of cherry bumpers caused much hilarity amongst my work mates who thought that I was getting up to all sorts of shenanigans. I was in fact describing my next plan to use up some of the 2kg of bargain cherries that I had acquired. I had had a search in my likely recipe books and these seemed like a good option. There was no picture but from what I could make out they would be like little cherry pasties.

The recipe in the book called for shortcut pastry made with butter and lard. I had neither so made do with butter substitute. And I was desperate to make almondy pastry which I felt sure would be possible. My recipe books failed me so I had to make it up. My mum taught me that you can replace the flour in cake recipes with ground almonds and I saw no reason why you couldn't do the same with pastry. So my recipe was:

• 100g ground almonds

• 200g plain flour

• 150g butter substitute

1. Whirled together in the food processor until it was crumby
2. Tipped into a bowl
3. Brought together in a ball (I didn't need to add any water)

While the pastry chilled I prepared the cherries. The recipe stated 250g cherries, stoned. What I had no idea of was whether this weight was before or after the stoning. Since I had so many cherries I went for the post stoning option.

Prepared cherries

My stoned cherries then had to be combined with some sugar (the recipe said 2 tablespoons but I had the dregs of a kilo bag left so just used that which may have been slightly more or less), ground almonds and almond essence / extract (not really sure what the difference is and I can't recall which one the recipe called for). I didn't think that we'd have any and I had prepared myself to use vanilla instead. But whilst delving for the vanilla I happened upon some almond. This must have been left over from when Matt, my husband, made me an everything cheesecake in an effort to impress me with his culinary skills very soon after we met. So that would be about 7 year old almond extract / essence.

The recipe informed me to roll out the pastry fairly thinly. Like the with / without stone cherry problem this vague instruction left me a little befuddled. So I just rolled it out as much as it would to fit my board. Then to cut it out into 10-12cm discs. I assumed that this was diameter rather than radius (that would be a very big disc) or circumference (that would be unnecessarily complex mathematics) and used my bright pink kitchen ruler to identify a suitable bowl to use as a cutter. I made six discs (as per recipe) and had some pastry left over so maybe I rolled it a bit too thin.

I divvied up the cherries amongst the discs and kept some back for the left over pastry. When I came to seal up my first bumper I realised that I had grossly over applied the cherries. So probably the 250g is the cherry weight before stoning. This first bumper needed a bit of patching up with some of the spare pastry but I removed some cherries from the others and had more success.

Adding the cherry filling

Sealed up

I pressed the left over pastry into a mini flan dish, filled this with the left over cherries and topped it with a party heart to make a mini-tart.

They went into the oven at 200°C until looking golden (about 12 minutes I think). They smelt amazing (I wish that you could transmit smell across the interweb): a kind of fruity, almondy aroma. But I didn't indulge right away as Barbara, my mother-in-law, had come for tea and brought a rather decadent cheesecake from a luxury supermarket for pudding; I had had a not insubstantial wedge and couldn't manage anything else sweet so soon afterwards. Matt and Barbara have a stronger constitution than me so they shared one (with some spray cream) for the purposes of taste testing. The verdict was positive. I was particularly pleased as my improvised almond pastry seemed to have worked.

Six cherry bumpers

Delicious served with
some spray cream

My first taste was just before bed when Matt and I shared the mini-tart. I was pleased with the taste. Today I had a cold bumper at lunchtime and a warmed bumper (with vanilla ice-cream) as a post-dancing snack. It was best warm, and the addition of ice-cream is to be recommended.

Cherry tart

Just 2 bumpers left now: 1 each for our packed lunches tomorrow. And I will able to prove to my work mates that the cherry bumper is a perfectly valid baked item.

Monday's cherry assembly

After band last night I needed to deal with 2kg of cherries. I'd got these for the bargain price of £5 at a foodie market at a conservation charity's property,  which is all very well but 5kg is rather a lot.

I love cherries and it would have been entirely possible for me to eat the lot as they came but I am sensible enough to know that while this would have been very pleasant for my taste buds and given me a lovely sugar rush, the effect on my intestines would not be as enjoyable.

This is about four fifths of the cherry haul

So I had put out an appeal via social media for what to do with my cherries. Pie or crumble seemed to be popular options. Black forest gateau was also mentioned. I would love to make (well eat) a black forest gateau but time would not permit on this occasion.

A few ideas for cherry preservation were suggested: 

• Pre-treatment and then freezing - I may yet resort to this but it seems somehow boring
• Jam - would have been lovely but I have no suitable jars (not having anticipated any preserve making I haven't been saving them)
• Cherry brandy - which I can only imagine as something very medicinal tasting

Matt, my husband, had found half a bottle of vodka in one of our cupboards a few days previously (whilst looking for some sherry I think). This was quite possibly left over from our wedding, nearly 5 years ago. So while cherry vodka seems hardly less likely to end up medicinal tasting than cherry brandy it would at least make sense based on the available ingredients.

Firstly I did a bit of cherry picking and chopped out any bits that weren't looking so nice, followed by a rinse. Then Matt joined me in a production line: he cut and stoned and I dropped the cherries into the bottle. The dropping made a very satisfying sound. It was while I was doing the dropping that I realised why it would have been a better idea to use a wide topped bottle: the removal of the cherries will be a challenge.

We added some sugar (arbitrarily 4 tablespoons) and then gave the bottle a good shake around.

The other fifth of the cherries are in here

We'll see just how medicinal it tastes in a few months. And if I can manage to get the cherries out there'll be a boozy black forest gateau to boot.

In the meantime there are still loads of cherries left so my intestines are still not safe....

Saturday's long awaited cheesecake

Last night one of my very best friends, Glen, arrived for the weekend. This is pleasing for a number of reasons including: day trips, food and games to name a few.

Glen is very good at sleeping and there are blackout curtains in our spare room. This morning while he slept I set to work hacking back the unidentified tree in our back garden. We inherited the tree. It’s quite nice but I decided that it had got out of control last week when I hit my head on it when standing up after filling the watering can. I also think this tree is taking more than its fair share of nutrients, depriving the Christmas tree that we are trying to nurture. I have no idea about pruning so approached the sawing with an artistic rather than horticultural perspective. I found the sawing strangely satisfying and ended up lopping off more than I had originally intended but am pleased with the result and as a bonus there’s now a nice spot for a new garden table.

Once we had breakfasted (although whether you can use this verb to refer to a meal eaten after midday is doubtful) we set out for a day trip around the sunny South Hams. Although short in distance to visit this part of the country, the style of the roads (narrow and windy with a high concentration of tractors and big cars) means that it takes quite a while to get to places. So when we arrived at our first destination (a house with gardens with beautiful views of what we learnt from the knowledgeable room guide is called a ria: something that looks like an estuary but isn’t really) we were ready for a bite to eat. We explored the property and gardens after a moderately agreeable Chelsea bun.

Onwards to Slapton Sands. Interesting fact of the day: 769 American servicemen died here during the “dress rehearsal” for the D-Day landings in 1944. The sun was properly warm and being by the seaside the occasion clearly called for an ice-cream. This was to prove somewhat tricky. Ice-cream stop 1: posh-ish looking tearoom. We went inside to look at the cakes but were rather rudely told that if we wanted ice-cream we would have to queue outside. Lesson 1 to ice-cream sellers: please do not be rude to potential ice-cream clients. Ice-cream stop 2: fish and chip restaurant. They were able to offer us vanilla, strawberry or chocolate, which in this day and age to an ice-cream lover is simply uninspiring. Lesson 2 to ice-cream sellers: please offer one or two “alternative” flavours (raspberry ripple would be fine). The fish and chip place people suggested we tried the pub next door. Ice-cream stop 3: pub. Here I faced the dilemma of whether to go for ginger or coffee ice-cream. I chose coffee and was not disappointed. We enjoyed our ice-creams whilst walking along the beach. And then back along the “ley” where we observed (what I suggested to be) the mating behaviour of (what were probably) some cormorants. This was just conjecture: I am not great at bird identification and I am certainly no expert in bird behaviour.

For a change, tonight’s dinner had been planned. Basically a big mixture of onion, peppers, salmon, curry paste, mushrooms, couscous, cherry tomatoes and black olives. It sounds deeply weird but I can assure you it’s very yummy. You pre-cook the veg and the salmon and then bake it all in the oven together. Due to extreme laziness it was served today with bagged salad (which we had planned to eat with Matt’s homemade pizza last night but forgot about in the deliciousness of the pizza).

Pudding was to be a cheesecake. I have quite a few recipes for cheesecake, none of which I have ever made before. So (being a good host) I offered Glen his choice of cheesecake. He chose cherry. I think this was selected following a viewing of a cherry pie earlier in the day. The making of the cheesecake was to prove far from straightforward.

(If you are finding this blog to be too long today I suggest you break here and finish reading another day.)

Most of the cheesecake recipes did not just require cheese. They also required soured cream or something similar. I found one cherry cheesecake recipe which was more fundamental in its ingredients but unfortunately only had the list of ingredients. I had somehow discarded the method from the cutting and not being an experienced cheesecake cook I wasn’t confident about the temperature etc. More searching and I found a simple recipe for a New York Cheesecake which was modifiable to include the desired cherries. Time taken to identify recipe: 15 minutes.

Setting to work of the base I was alarmed to find that we had no biscuits. The low risk option would have been to pop to the corner shop and get some biscuits. But I chose the high risk option and decided to make a base from scratch. I used a very basic shortbread recipe from my most trusted recipe book and pressed it into the base of a spring form tin. I thought it would probably be best to pre-bake this. I had a bit of shortbread mixture left but would worry about that later. Time taken to make base: 15 minutes. Time taken to bake base: until it looked a bit brown around the sides – about 20 minutes I think.

The cheesecake bit required full-fat cream cheese. I can never bring myself to buy full-fat cream cheese. So two tubs of half-fat (at least I didn’t use the super-low-fat stuff) were mixed up with some sugar, lemon zest (I wasn’t totally sure about this based on the subsequent planned addition of cherries but thought that the acidity might be needed so went ahead), a tiny bit of flour and 2 eggs plus one egg yolk (I now have one egg white in the fridge which I am rather at a loss with what to do with). I poured it over the shortbread base. This needed to cook at a lower temperature so couldn’t go in until the main dinner was out. I had a bit of cheesy mixture left but would worry about that later. Time taken to mix cheesy bit: 10 minutes. Time waiting to put cheesecake in the oven: 20 minutes. Time baking: 20 minutes.

After consuming the salmon / couscous dish I removed the partially cooked cheesecake from the oven and went about adding the cherry topping. I had no idea what I was doing and had sort of abandoned any semblance of a recipe. I had 3 choices of cherry: 1. jar of cherry jam 2. jar of cherries in syrup 3. jar of cherries in kirsch. I thought it best to test a spoonful of each and decided that a combination of the cherry jam and cherries in syrup would be best. I heated up some cherry jam in the microwave and poured over the cheesecake then piled on the cherries before putting it back in the oven.

I had a few cherries leftover, plus a load of cherry juice, plus a bit of cherry jam, plus a now open but barely consumed jar of cherries in kirsch, but would worry about those later. Time taken to devise cheesecake topping: 10 minutes. Time taken to add cheesecake topping: 5 minutes. Time taken to complete baking of cheesecake: 45 minutes.

While this was baking I used up some of the leftovers to make some mini-cheesecakes. I was pleased to be able to use the mini-flan tins that I had inherited from my granny. Whether it will be possible to remove the mini-cheesecakes from these we are yet to discover. I was pleased to experiment with some other flavours, so we have some chocolate-orange cheesecakes (made with marmalade) and some crustless ginger and honey cheesecakes (I ran out of shortbread mixture). Whether these will taste any we are yet to discover.

It wasn’t until it was nearly time to remove the cheesecake from the oven (by which time we were all salivating in anticipation) that I realised that the cheesecake would need to be chilled before serving. Apparently you’re not supposed to put things straight out of the oven into the fridge. Matt, my husband, says that it’s bad for the fridge (this strikes me as being the domestic appliance equivalent of anthropomorphism). So I wrapped the cheesecake up and put it in the garden.

Whilst it was chilling I enjoyed a game of my favourite colourful block based game and also one of my favourite word tile games. Time taken to chill cheesecake: 1 hour.

The cheesecake wasn't fully cold but we could wait no longer. But it was amazing. Time taken for 3 people to eat half a cheesecake: 5 minutes.

Tomorrow we plan to go for a long swim. And maybe a long walk too…..

Before trying the fully chilled version of the cheesecake. And the mini-ones.