Wednesday's cocktail muffins

I had yet again failed to meet the customary work based requirement of bringing in something nice to eat. The occasion this time was my birthday, and the excuse was a very busy week. Things still hadn't really settled down but I was determined to provide something tasty for our team meeting. The previous evening a friend had come round for dinner and I'd done our now almost classic curry (mushroom, chickpea, sweet potato) and had finished it off with half a tin of coconut milk. So now I had half a tin of coconut milk left over. In my experience there are very few things to do with half a tin of coconut milk.

I had a concept in mind.... a kind of pina colada in cake form. I would need to achieve this before work so time being limited I would stick with muffins as the cake form, I know what I'm doing here. I didn't have a precise recipe but there are lots for sort of fruity muffins which I felt fairly confident that I could adapt.

The usual muffin method applied:

1. Mix the dry ingredients: 280g self raising flour, ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, ½ teaspoon salt, 100g caster or granulated sugar.

2. Mix the wet ingredients: 1 egg (beaten), half a 400ml tin of coconut milk (approx – it might have been slightly less), 100g tinned pineapple (chopped up into little bits with kitchen scissors – try not to add too much more liquid or it'll all get rather soggy!), 90ml vegetable oil

3. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients: it should look like a lumpy batter, not a smooth dough

4. Transfer to muffin tin and bake: this gave me an opportunity to use the new muffin cases that my mum had bought me for my birthday. She knows how to spoil her little girl – I will only ever buy for myself the plain white ones and recently have been using cupcake cases (rather than muffin cases) which are the wrong shape for my tin but I bought them by accident and refuse to let them go to waste. I finished off by sprinkling a little bit of desiccated coconut over the tops (we have a lot of desiccated coconut for some reason so I'm always pleased to find an outlet.

5. Bake at 190ºC for about 25minutes (until they look golden and pass the skewer test).

I took a risk in taking these to work without conducting a taste test myself. Even Matt, my husband, didn't do a taste test. I was doing well for time so just in case I also made some mincemeat muffins too and some nutty gingerbread ones that I made made whilst waiting for our visitor the previous evening. The pina colada muffins went down particularly well with the female contingent of the team (80%, but 85% of the meeting attendees) and I was assured that they performed both in terms of flavour and texture.

I got to try one myself later that evening as I took all the leftover muffins to our last dancing class of the season, and it really was rather good. Again, it was the ladies who were most forward in testing out my new creation – I suppose it is a fairly feminine flavour of muffin but I'm sure that men would get a lot of enjoyment out of them too if they could overcome their bravado. The others were enjoyed too, in class or at the pub at our end of term gathering. I'd recommend you give mincemeat muffins a go if you would like to serve home-made mince pies but can't be bothered with the pastry. And I think I'll be trying out some more cocktail based muffins as the season demands. These ones could even perhaps have a slosh of coconut liqueur added to them on future occasions.

Sunday's Thai experiment

The mange tout peas are proving to be one of my most productive crops. Very nice straight off the plant, or stir fry would be my usual default cook but I wanted to try something different.

Somehow I got it in my head that I would do a Thai curry. I have never done a Thai curry before and to be quite honest I don't really know how it differs from a non-Thai curry, except that I think it should have lemongrass in it. So I picked up some lemongrass at the supermarket the other day, as well as some spring onions which I thought would be appropriate, and hoped that I be able to cobble the rest of the ingredients together from the fridge/freezer/cupboards.

I thought that it would be a good idea at least get some sort of recipe to work to. I found one about how to make a Thai curry paste but had barely any of the components, and another for Thai vegetables with coconut milk. As it was I basically ended up making something up. We are trying to clear a bit of space in the freezer for more ice-cream so I decided to use up some of the white fish that we have stored away from various bargain purchases. Matt kindly helped out by defrosting.

The curry also had in it (in addition to the mange tout, lemongrass, fish and spring onions):

• Groundnut oil – in preference to olive oil, I thought it would be more authentically Thai (or at least more Thai than olives)
• Red pepper – I sliced this thinly and put it in to fry off before anything else. Red pepper never seems to cook enough so I wanted to give it a fighting chance
• Celery – the recipe had this in. I wouldn't usually put it in curry but didn't see that it could do too much harm
• Chilli – I put a whole one in (chopped) and just had to hope that this wouldn't make it too hot. Following my most recent chilli incident I am being most wary of touching my eyes / lips etc
• Cumin – Matt's favourite spice
• Ginger – my favourite spice
• Sweet potato – grated. The recipe suggested one and a half cups
  
  of grated pumpkin. I didn't have any pumpkin but was intrigued by this kind of thing so used a sweet potato instead. I don't like using “cups” as a measurement because it is not specific as to what size cup it should be or how densely packed the ingredient should be in it. So I used one medium sweet potato. It looked just like grated carrot and I am contemplating its possible role in a cake.
• Coconut milk, lime juice and vegetable stock – added as it was all looking rather dry.
• Broccoli – probably not very Thai but I love it. I put this in right towards the end so it steamed in all the vapour.

Due to my inability to reliably cook rice I would have been quite happy to eat the curry without any accompanying carbohydrate, but Matt volunteered to do some rice for us. As usual his rice came out perfectly. When I try to replicate his method I still fail.

We were a bit unsure as to how edible this would be – Matt suggested that it would be somewhere on the spectrum between average and excellent (it did smell good). I had barely followed any recipe and all the quantities were guesstimated. With the lemongrass I had used an ingredient that has never before graced my kitchen shelves, I sliced it up a little bit and crushed it a little bit before putting it in the pan; we decided that we wouldn't eat it and pulled the little woody bits out as we went along. But now I'm kind of curious to know what it would have tasted like.

The verdict on the whole thing was that it was towards the excellent end of the spectrum, but that it could have taken a little more spicing. Matt may regret saying that as next time I'll put two chillies in.

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. 

Friday's paradise slice

The dual aim of the Paradise Slice was to use up a load of dessicated coconut and prepare a tasty snack for us during a team building event the following day. I seem to recall my granny making something called Paradise Slice when I was little - I've no idea if this resembled this what I made.

The recipe directed that you should melt some chocolate to make a topping for this. Based on the expected weather this seemed like a very bad idea for something that I planned to carry up a "mountain" with no cooling facilities so I amended the recipe to include some chocolate in the main mix. 

It was a pleasingly simple recipe, ideal for making on a Friday night after a long working week. You basically beat together 100g butter (or fake butter) and 200g sugar. Then you beat in 2 eggs and 200g dessicated coconut. Finally you stir through 100g sultanas, 100g glacé cherries and I think I added about 150g of chopped chocolate - a mixture of plain and white. Even more pleasingly you will note that this requires only one bowl, thus creating minimal washing up.

Then you press it into a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake at 140°C for about half an hour - until golden. Because you've baked it with baking paper you don't even really need to wash up the baking tray.

I neglected to take a photo of this but can assure you it looked delicious. Matt, my husband, kindly chopped it up into pieces in preparation for sharing with the team. 

I think that the verdict was one of approval - I certainly enjoyed it. And it made a good breakfast this morning for my post night out hypoglycaemia.

The remains of the cake

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 quick curry

Until today, most of this week’s meals have been of the x-on-toast variety: beans, cheese, sardines, more beans. I branched out and tried out a different type of sardine (my usual is the sort in tomato sauce): picante. This was mainly because there were none in tomato sauce in the cupboard. Picante turns out to be oil with a 2 whole chillies. It was a good job that Matt, my husband, didn’t try these – they made my nose run so I dread to think what they would have done to his delicate taste buds.

The x-on-toast meals were a result of there not being anything much else at home: yesterday’s “big shop” was well overdue. Mostly this involved me doing the shopping while Matt was on the phone. I replenished the oily fish supplies, reverting to form with the tomato sauced type and also got a good selection of fresh food. We shopped after our dancing class. This has the benefit of the shop being quite empty and there usually being quite a few reductions but the drawback of being hungry whilst shopping (the cha cha cha is particularly energy consuming). So, unchecked by Matt (we usually put the brakes on each other’s retail impulses), I was unable to resist the super-reduced bakery products. I saw the super-reduced stickers but didn’t really think about what I would do with a packet of sesame seed bagels, 6 finger rolls, 6 granary rolls (I am at least partially prepared for barbeque season now) and a full-sized loaf of sliced bread when I got them home.

The other drawback of the late evening visit to the supermarket is the lack of checkout staff – necessitating the use of the self-checkout. These were initially a source of great amusement to me and reminded me of my days working in a large stationery shop. They’re still fine if you just want a few simple (i.e. not age restricted or security tagged) items but for a trolley load of stuff they are not optimal. My usual supermarket bagging system is ruined. Anyway, last night I let Matt deal with the self-checkout on his own while I then talked on the phone.

As well as all the refined carbohydrate I had picked up sufficient provisions to make a curry tonight. This actually only required only the addition of an onion and some mushrooms to a few things we already had but psychologically the restocking of the fridge restored my cooking motivation. Usually I like to cook curry very slowly but today we wanted to swim before dinner and I thought better than to leave the gas on while we were out.

After a quick fuel up on half a bagel with my favourite yeast extract we headed out to the pool.

The pool seemed rather busy so I asked the lifeguard if all of the lanes were for general public lengths. Despite being a lovely new facility they have yet to devise a system of indicating where I should swim at any particular time that I turn up. I was told that none of the lanes were for the public as it was “The University”. I think he must have noticed a disappointed look on my face as he then said that it would be ok to swim in one of the lanes. Clearly my physique did not give away the elite swimmer that I am becoming (haha!) as he suggested that I go in the lane with all the people doing breast-stroke with their heads out of the water. I explained my training and that I would be going fast (haha!) and was redirected to the “fast of the fast lanes” (haha!). Whilst I was preparing to enter the water (positioning of goggles) the lifeguard commented that I must be an open water swimmer (haha!), I’m not sure if that might relate to my physique too – maybe I looked well insulated! I started off going quite fast and was keeping pace with the “fastest of the fast” but reverted to my usual pace as they emptied out of the pool. Eventually I had the lane to myself. This struck me as the perfect opportunity to practice my tumble turns. Believe it or not the tumble turn has been recommended to me by a doctor as a good exercise for my back. Usually they aren’t possible because either there are too many people hanging around at the end of the lane and I can’t judge my tumbling that accurately to avoid them, or there are swimmers behind me and I worry about getting disorientated during my tumbling and crashing into them (or them into me). Allegedly the tumble turn is supposed to be an efficient way of getting from one length to the next but I think that I’m missing this benefit by coming to a standstill before executing it. It is a very non-automatic motion and it’s never until I’m upside down that my brain realises that it’s going to have to twist my body to get out of it.

I had a sesame seed (from the pre-swim half-bagel) stuck in my teeth for most of my swim which distracted me from my length counting.

We got home at 9pm after a reasonable swim (it was cut short because some club people turned up to use the section of the pool I was in and I was insufficiently motivated to move to another part once my rhythm had been interrupted). This was already too late to be eating but I had been thinking about curry all day and if it wasn’t this then it would be another x-on-toast. I was very hungry so filled the immediate gap with a mini cheese in red wax which one of Matt’s friends had left behind at the weekend.

The curry is a tried and tested one first created by Matt and replicated on many occasions since; sometimes by him but tonight by me since time was of the essence and speed chopping does not feature on Matt’s CV. The curry consists of local curry powder, chilli (not too much), onion, garlic, sweet potato, mushrooms, chickpeas, tinned tomatoes, a bit of stock and some coconut milk.

While this was all brewing up I had to deal with yesterday’s bread. Matt managed to rearrange the freezer to make space for the rolls. This required the removal of some soup which will have to be eaten this weekend and some pistachio ice-cream which would not last so long. There was still a full sized loaf of sliced bread. I decided that the best thing would be to turn it into bread crumbs. I intended to package this in 200g and 100g bags which would fit into small spaces in the freezer. I was 30g short for my final 100g bag. I suppose that is accounted for by all the crumbs that Fred, my mother-in-law’s Yorkshire terrier, helpfully cleared up.

The curry was delicious, despite the quick cook. Matt had his with naan bread (also removed from the freezer to make way for the new things). I had mine with lime pickle to spice it up a bit. We both had mango chutney. Desert was the pistachio ice-cream with some unnecessary spray cream. Now I’m thinking of things to do with 770g of bread crumbs. All I can think of at the moment is Christmas pudding.