Slack Lasagne: Games

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.

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.