Tag Archives: Baking

Toasted Ginger Cake

11 Tuesday Dec 2012

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IMG_0772Something dark is needed, and I feel it can’t be chocolate. Something dense, oblong and with ginger nubbins. Some sort of nub is required. I have spent the whole week researching chocolate pecan torte. I still know nothing about tortes. And I realize this is not the time for light and airy cakes with a dusting of something smokily ethereal. If ever there was a time for density it is now. And the heart wants what it wants, as Woody Allen once said (as well as “I’ll have the alfalfa sprouts and a plate of mashed yeast” – LA restaurant, Annie Hall).

I don’t know why this has to be toasted, but it does. I first tried it about two years ago in a cafe in Sussex. I asked if I could get the recipe and the cook refused. He didn’t refuse to my face, which was in some ways more embarrassing because he was about a yard away from me in his open kitchen, and the rejection was delivered via a waitress. I don’t know whether I was being a bit pushy, presumptuous in asking. I thought it was the best ginger cake ever, and was sending my compliments along with the question. I didn’t want a print-out or anything. Just the basics. Anyway, two years on and many ginger cake recipes later, and by George I think I’ve got it.

I always think of this time of year as a period in which chocolate is passed over in favour of nuts and spices. We are entering the season of thin, biscuity pastry, lemony innards, honeyed syrup, stewed fruit, toasted nuts. The Elizabethan sweetmeat reigns. I am gearing up for mince pies. I feel I’ve thrown everything into this cake. Because it’s such a straightforward recipe, I felt it could be fattened up a bit. I wanted peel so I threw in some of my thick-cut marmalade. I had maple syrup so in it went. I also tried maple sugar, because I like its darker ‘dried toffee’ taste. But most importantly, I candied some ginger. This took a while, but the results were far more interesting than the stuff you buy. The syrup alone is worth the effort; peppery and pungent and a deep thick amber. It keeps for months.IMG_0802

To return to the source of the wound for a moment, the cake whose recipe I coveted was a ginger parkin, a staple from the northeast of England. ‘Fresh’ parkin is frowned upon; a slightly aged parkin is the acceptable form, so try to withstand the temptation to eat it straight away. It improves if you leave it at least a couple of days. On its own, unadorned, the cake is lovely with a cup of tea. The toffee sauce takes it to an almost obscene level of indulgence; we are now in pudding territory. Eat it on Boxing day watching a crap film.

Toasted Ginger Cake 

Adapted from Andrew Pern, Black Pudding and Foie Gras

100g self-raising flour (or use plain flour and add 1 tsp of baking powder)

75g oatmeal (or porridge oats whizzed in a blender)

A pinch of sea salt

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 heaped tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp freshly ground nutmeg

2 tbs shred from marmalade (optional)

2 heaped tbs preserved/candied ginger, finely diced

175g golden syrup* (utilize some of the ginger syrup if you have it)

50g black treacle*

100g butter

100g soft brown sugar

1 egg, beaten

2 heaped tbs milk

For the toffee sauce

115g unsalted butter

115g light brown sugar

140ml double/heavy cream

Sea salt

Preheat the oven to 140C/285F/gas mark 1. Sieve the flour, bicarb, salt, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon into a bowl, then stir in the oatmeal and the candied ginger and peel (if using). Gently melt down the syrup, treacle, butter and sugar, keeping it just below a simmer – do not let it boil. Stir in the dry mix until amalgamated, then add the egg and milk, so it’s a soft, semi-pouring consistency. Pour into a greased, 20cm square cake tin and bake for an hour and a half, or until firm in the centre. Leave to stand for half an hour, then turn out. The parkin’s now ready to be served. Like good wine, it improves with age; store in an airtight container. For the best flavour, keep for three weeks.

Make the sauce by putting all the ingredients into a pan. Heat slowly until the butter has melted, then turn up the heat and bring to the boil. Boil for about 3 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. If you want a more gutsy flavour (and you don’t want insipid toffee sauce) go until the colour has deepened slightly to a warm nut-brown. Poke some holes in the cake and slather the sauce over the top, letting it drip down the sides. Toast under the grill before serving. This recipe is based on the same principle as the Sticky Toffee Pudding.

* In the US, use corn syrup in place of golden syrup if you can’t find it, and molasses in place of black treacle. I went to India Sweets and Spices here in LA where they have a British section.

Candied ginger

Adapted from David Lebovitz, Ready for Dessert

1 pound (500g) fresh ginger, peeled

4 cups (800g) sugar, plus additional sugar for coating the ginger slices, if desired

4 cups (1l) water

Pinch of salt

Slice the ginger as thinly as possible. It can’t be too thin, so use a sharp knife. Get the youngest ginger you can find, as it’ll be less fibrous. Put the ginger slices in a non-reactive saucepan, add enough water to cover the ginger, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and let the ginger simmer for ten minutes. Drain, and repeat, simmering the ginger slices one more time. Mix the sugar and 4 cups (1l) water in the pan, along with a generous pinch of sea salt and the ginger slices, and cook until the temperature reaches 225F (106C.) If you don’t have a candy thermometer, the consistency will be similar to runny honey. It will have reduced quite considerably, and will leave a generous coating on the back of a wooden spoon.

Remove from heat and let stand for at least an hour – overnight is ideal. Or if you want to coat the slices with sugar, drain very well while the ginger is hot and toss the slices in granulated sugar. Shake off the excess and spread the ginger slices on a cooling rack overnight, until they are tacky-dry. Alternatively, the ginger, packed in its syrup, can be stored in the refrigerator for up to one year. If tossed in sugar, the pieces can be stored at room temperature for a few months.IMG_0817

Warm cherry & chocolate cakes

20 Tuesday Nov 2012

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Cherries in November, I hear you ask? No, I have only the dried versions – wizened little blisters plumped up by liquor – but I love the look of these deep, dark orbs. And oddly they seem more suited to winter in my mind. This story is a pulling together of the different threads of my England trip, and the genus comes from a visit to Brighton, the streets slaked that day with dirty rain. It was also cold and people were standing in doorways looking out, not at anyone in particular, but simply looking on with flattened, peeved expressions. My mum and I had the idea to see the Biba exhibition at the Brighton museum, but instead went to Primark. The rain washed away any ingenuity that day, but at least I came away with a good packet of pants.

We ran out of the rain into a cafe. It was warm inside and there were some lovely looking cakes on the counter, although with my mother the assumption is always that we will have soup. Soup and tea. The girl behind the counter was bewitchingly friendly. She was Polish, and it was her mother, Ella, who did all the baking. Her mother was downstairs. There was a Black Forest cake, with all its turrets and glossy layers, a plum crumble tart, and whirling pastries. We ordered soup, which was beef and leek – delicate and creamy. My mum ate the plum crumble tart. A chocolate cake arrived, carried by Ella.

By this point, I knew that my mum would be engaging in conversation with Ella, and that this would happen as soon as the cake was released. It began as it always does – with a few compliments, and a request for ingredients. A slow and delicate deconstruction of the soup followed, and then onto the plum crumble tart. Without this dandling, this gentle back and forth, I know Ella would not have brought out a jar of her homemade black cherry jam for us.

When it came to packing for the return trip to LA, I decided to leave the jar of jam behind. It was too heavy, and it was glass. Besides, my mum would enjoy it. I put it in the cupboard but it found its way back into my bag. I returned it, hid it behind some tea, but there it was again, sitting at a jaunty angle in amongst my clothes. It eventually stayed with her. I assumed you could get black cherry jam in LA. I was being rather cavalier about it; it was fine, it was only jam, she should have it. But on my return here, it gnawed at me. I missed it. I thought often of the contents, and the patterned lid, and the way Ella had presented it, her face flushed with promise and oven heat. It’s funny the things we regret.

I would like to think these cakes are based on the Ischler torte, the Viennese chocolate cake with cherry and almond filling, and not the smothering Black Forest. But ultimately, there is something very British about these little chocolate fondants. We are so in love with the oozing and glaucous pudding, with dark and brooding chocolate. And cream, of course. If you can’t find dried cherries, you could try prunes soaked in brandy, raisins soaked in whisky or dried cranberries in vodka. And, of course, if you have some homemade cherry jam, use that.

Warm cherry and chocolate cakes

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Three Good Things on a Plate

Makes 6

100g dried cherries

40ml Calvados

A little cocoa powder for dusting

150g dark chocolate, broken into small pieces

150g unsalted butter, diced, plus extra for greasing

3 large eggs

75g caster/superfine sugar

35g plain flour

Soak the cherries in the Calvados in a small bowl for at least 2 hours (or overnight), to absorb most of the liquid.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F and put a baking tray inside to heat up. Butter 6 dariole moulds or ramekins well and dust with the cocoa. Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir gently at the end to blend and leave to cool a little. Beat the eggs and sugar together for a good 5 minutes until the mixture is thick and creamy and ‘holds a trail’ (when a little is dropped from the whisk it sits on the top of the mixture before slowly sinking back in).

Fold the melted chocolate and butter lightly into the egg mousse. Sift the flour over the mixture, then fold it in carefully. It should be throughly incorporated, but don’t overwork the mixture. Fold in the cherries and Calvados.

Divide the mixture between the ramekins. You can prepare these cakes ahead to this point, if you like, and refrigerate them for up to 2 hours. Bake the puds on the hot tray in the oven for 10-12 minutes. Turn out immediately into shallow bowls and serve with thin, chilled cream.

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Intense

05 Monday Nov 2012

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I’d like to clarify one thing: Los Angeles is not laid-back. I can illustrate this with a recent happening in Runyon Canyon which involved the lady in the picture below. It was immediately clear she was mad. To conflate the English and American uses of the word, she was both insane and angry. She strode up the hill, got very close to us, pivoted and marched back down. She did this a few times, and we took some surreptitious photos, which she seemed to know about even though she couldn’t see anything.

“Are you taking pictures of me?” she barked, striding up the hill again, ski hat and sunglasses obscuring most of her face. We assured her we were not, and continued on our way. But however far we got, she would find us, get very close, then pivot and stride in the opposite direction. It was like some sort of drama school exercise to do with spatial awareness. Specifically the work of Rudolf Laban, which she would have excelled at.

Each time she came near, she raised her voice, and started talking very loudly into her cellphone. It wasn’t clear if there was anyone real on the other end, but it was obvious she was talking about movies: meetings, castings, budgets were mentioned. And it occurred to me that this was like a mad and intense version of what happens in LA every day. This is a city of creatives. Imagine living in a city peopled only by librarians or lollipop ladies* (which would be nice, I think; you would have a wide selection of reading material while being able to cross the road safely).

I never thought I’d come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as too much creativity. Being surrounded by people who are expressing themselves all the time is quite frightening, particularly when there are also yawning canyons, deep bowls of dust, fissured, cracked earth. There are mountain lions and rattlesnakes in the vicinity. Hawks hang in the air. LA is quite wild enough.

In keeping with today’s theme, these cookies are very intense. They’re little explosions of citrus and chocolate, and leave you feeling quite caffeinated and in need of moisture. They use a lot of butter, so this is an opportunity to use the good stuff, if you can get your hands on it. They aren’t soft, but snap in the mouth, and have a crystalline, sandy quality. The flavour of orange is not subtle (the recipe asks for the zest of 5 oranges, no less) and the dark chocolate is strong and edgy. Children may well turn their noses up at them. All the more for you.

Orange chocolate chip cookies

Adapted from Dan Lepard, The Guardian

350g plain flour

½ tsp salt

150g icing sugar

200g unsalted butter, slightly softened

Finely grated zest of 5 oranges (have yourself an orange juice)

200g chocolate chips (or a block of dark chocolate roughly chopped)

Put the flour, salt, icing sugar, butter and zest in a bowl and rub together into a smooth, soft dough (or you can use a food processor). Add the chocolate and work quickly to combine. Either divide the dough in two, and roll each half into a cylinder, or pat the entire amount of dough into a wide, flat disc. Wrap in plastic wrap/clingfilm and put in the freezer to firm up (you can leave it there for a month).

To bake, heat the oven to 170C/335F. Line a baking tray with parchment/baking paper. Take the dough out of the freezer and let it soften slightly for about ten minutes. It needs to stay firm for slicing. Using a serrated knife, cut out thinnish rounds (0.75-1cm). Alternatively, place the whole disc of dough between two sheets of cling film/plastic wrap and roll out to the same thickness, and then use a pastry cutter. The first kind will look like coins, the second like your more conventional cookie.

Sit the cookies on the lined tray about 2-3cm apart and bake for about 15-20 minutes (I don’t know the fierceness of your oven), until lightly browned and crisp. Remove from the oven, transfer to wire racks and leave to cool.

An additional recipe

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Three Good Things on a Plate

These cookies can form the basis of a lovely chocolate tiffin, or refrigerator cake. Put 200g of broken up bits of dark chocolate, 110g butter and 1 tablespoon of syrup or honey into a heatproof bowl. Stand this over a pan of just-simmering water until the chocolate is melted and smooth. Roughly chop 75g of crystallised ginger (or a handful of raisins and/or dried apricots) and crush the cookies to small chunks. Pour the melted chocolate over the ginger/dried fruit and cookies, and mix. Tip this mixture into a lined loaf tin. Smooth out, leave to cool, then transfer to the fridge for several hours to set.

*Crossing guards

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Fruit tea loaf

29 Monday Oct 2012

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This is good hibernating food, inclement weather or no, but bad weather definitely helps. When the sun is shining, I have always felt intense pressure to go out, to embrace the rays. Years of watching our little black and white TV in a darkened room while my mother stood in the doorway yelling “Turn that man off!” has complicated my relationship to daylight.

This was generally followed by her pulling back the curtains, flinging open the windows and shouting “Look! It’s a beautiful day outside!” The defense was nearly always the same: that this was our ‘favourite programme.’ But pretty much every TV show fulfilled this criteria – Charlie’s Angels, Swap Shop, Doctor Who, Dallas, Crown Court, Bagpuss, Juliet Bravo. However wonderful it was to play outside in the garden, or speed up and down the hills on our bikes, sadly nothing was as compelling as staring morosely at a screen eating crumpets.

I have had to fight this urge since returning to LA. It is October, the nights here are thankfully chilly, and there has been a bracing wind that makes everything rustle and bend. There is drama outside and this is a welcome distraction; it calls for a deep drift of blankets, and the roasting of root vegetables. It gets complicated during the day, when it is perfect. Warm, sunny, happy, solid, blank. I am back in a David Hockney painting. Tough little colours fight it out. I sit and watch, like a parade. Even the ladies’ swimming caps have a Kodachrome quality to them. I looked down at the pool today and watched this hot pink flower slicing through the water.

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But I’m still clinging to afternoon tea and this is also when the sun dips behind the hill, ushering in coolness and flapping leaves. People crane to get the last few minutes of sun and heat here; towels are still draped at 4pm, chairs re-maneuvered every ten minutes. And so it seems perverse – even ungrateful – to say it, and it feels a guilty thing to want to admit to, but the dark is still my favourite time of day.

David Hockney, John St. Clair Swimming, 1972

You can simply stop at the tea-soaked dried fruit stage if you like and omit the sugar. After you’ve let it macerate overnight, drain off the liquid into a pan and boil until it’s reduced by half, then pour this syrup back over the fruit. In this state (see top picture), it is lovely added to a ricotta cheesecake or served on its own with a dollop of mascarpone. Or with Greek yoghurt for breakfast. It gets plumper and more syrupy the longer you leave it too. This is inspired by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s apricot and tea recipe from Three Good Things on a Plate.

Fruit tea loaf

Adapted from Jane Grigson, English Food

375g (12 oz) mixed dried fruit (I used only apricots and raisins)

125g (4 oz) dark brown sugar

250ml – 300ml (½ pint) strained, hot and strong Earl Grey tea

250g (8 oz) plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 egg

pinch of ground cloves and cinnamon

zest of 1 lemon

Stir together the dried fruit, lemon zest, sugar and hot tea. Leave overnight to macerate. The next day, beat in the dry ingredients, followed by the lightly beaten egg. Scrape the stiff batter into a lined and buttered 1lb loaf tin at 325F or 180C for about 1 hour, or until the loaf is firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. Serve thinly sliced (possibly toasted) with butter and a pot of tea. For the best flavour, keep the loaf airtight for two to three days. It gets better.

Hedgerow crumble

03 Wednesday Oct 2012

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I’m in England and it’s autumn, my favourite time of year. September in particular is lovely in Sussex; soft air and bursts of sunshine (everyone is wearing sunglasses in brief interludes) in between the torrential downpours and foggy breath. Cobwebs stretch for miles it seems – it’s like being surrounded by endless pairs of gossamer tights.

On my walks so far I have seen crab apples, rose hips, elderberries, haws from the hawthorn bush, the first blackberries and what looked like small, blushing quinces. The last time I was here there was a fox lying in the brambles nearby. It was a beautiful orangey-red with streaks of black. Apparently it had signed up with the local vet and was receiving regular meals from neighbours. Every time I passed by that spot, it was there.

This time it was gone. But there are cats everywhere, large and languid, stalking their way through the golf course. The sea is one big, frothy grey drink. People stare at it through their windscreens and eat sandwiches. It reminds me of Victoria Wood’s story about the English couple who visited the Taj Mahal and said, “It’s nice, but I think it would look better with a tax disc and some windscreen wipers.” I am craving a Yorkie bar. I am also thinking about pork pies.

Whenever I come back from LA, I am amazed by how easy it is to walk to the shops and buy things. How small and green it is here, how different. The space we occupy involves other people who you must always take into account. When you walk, you may be barring someone else. This happened as I was looking for the right luggage carousel at Heathrow and I heard my first muttered “tsk”. Not yet through Nothing to Declare and I had already got in the way. I think he also rolled his eyes as he overtook me and then stood waiting for his suitcase, which failed to arrive. I left first.

Next to all these small places and quiet maneuverings, LA feels like a giant’s enclosure. Everyone seems very big over there now – too tall for proper eye contact. Maybe it’s the cars and the wide, scary freeways. I feel like a Lilliputian among my own people again.

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Apples have been a worry in England. Too much rain has soaked the orchards and they have been slow to appear. But our local greengrocer has some fine-looking varieties. The tart and chunky Bramley, the ruddy Cox, and Russets, grey-green and alabaster smooth. For all the concern about the tardiness of this year’s crop, in almost every garden I passed I saw a tree laden with apples. Nice for me at least.

Crumble is such an English staple that I thought it was the obvious choice: it’s warming, beautifully simple and not too sweet. I have used blackberries my mum and I picked while out on a walk and a mixture of apples I ‘scrumped’ (stole). Quinces, if you had them, would need to be pre-cooked. Damsons are the ultimate in hedgerow treasure. They are a relation to the garden plum, wild, dark and dusky and brilliant in crumbles and cobblers. They also make a phenomenal jam. Spit the stones out.

Hedgerow crumble: blackberry and apple

Inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, All Change, The Guardian

Serves 8-10

6-8 tart apples (around 750g)

35g butter

2 tbs soft brown sugar

225g blackberries

For the sweet shortcrust pastry (this is optional, but dresses it up a bit)

200g icing/powdered sugar

Pinch of salt

125g cold, unsalted butter, cubed

1 large egg yolk

50-75ml cold wtaer (or milk)

For the crumble (not optional)

100g plain flour

75g unsalted butter

50g light brown sugar

50g ground hazelnuts or almonds

To make the pastry, put the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and blitz to combine. Add the butter and blitz again (or rub in with your fingertips) until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and enough milk or water to bring the mixture into clumps. Knead this into a ball and wrap in clingfilm/plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 190C/375F. Roll out the pastry quite thinly, to fit a 24cm tart tin. Prick all over with a fork and chill for 10 minutes, then line the pastry with greaseproof paper or foil and baking beans, or rice, and bake blind for ten minutes. Remove the beans/rice and paper, and cook for about 10 more minutes, until lightly browned. Trim the edges if need be.

Quarter and core the apples, then slice thickly. Heat the butter in a large pan until foaming, then add the apples. Fry gently for five minutes, tossing them about until they start to soften. Sprinkle over the sugar and stir so it dissolves into the apples and the juices. Spread this mixture over the baked pastry case, and scatter over the blackberries.

For the crumble, sift the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and ground nuts, squeeze into lumps and then scatter over the tart to give it a rough topping. You can improvise here and add spices such as cinnamon or grated nutmeg and even finely chopped rosemary to the crumble topping. Bake the lot for 30 minutes until golden brown and bubbling. Serve warm with cream or ice cream.

Banana & raisin bread

15 Wednesday Aug 2012

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I had no idea raisins were so divisive. Is it possible to be allergic to them? Many people appear to be, or is it one of those peccadilloes conveniently masquerading as an allergy (example: “I’m allergic to sparkling water”). Anyway, they are ‘not liked’ in a way I hadn’t encountered until quite recently. I could eat raisins all day, just so you know, particularly when they are allowed to seep for a while in some gorgeous, malty liquor. They plump up in the juice and turn a limpid gold. Then, when the cake is baked, they add both crunch and pop. Fragrant little bodies, they are.

This is a lovely cake to make if you are at a loss. A few blackening bananas are all that is required, along with the standard store cupboard ingredients. I made it constantly when I first arrived in LA three years ago; it was both escape and focus. I gave almost all of it away to neighbours, who seemed to take longer and longer to get to the door. It was good stuff, but perhaps they read into the gesture some of the desperation I was feeling. I didn’t drive and I couldn’t walk anywhere – the sidewalk around where we live peters out after five minutes, as if the people making it got distracted and forgot to finish. And walking has always been my lifeline. I sort out my thoughts that way, or I discover what my thoughts actually are. So the cake was my version of lowering knotted bed sheets out of the window – one of these neighbours would be my escape route, they would be my friend, hopefully give me a lift somewhere, and I could walk.

It never happened – they had jobs. And besides, I’m not a huge fan of the LA genre of walking, which is to spend most of your time in your car looking for somewhere to park. A corner shop, that’s what I wanted. A street, some grass, a view or two. Eventually I was forced behind the wheel, passing my test with white knuckles, my face a sheet of terror and disbelief. I hoped it was a one-off – the driving thing. I wanted to keep on taking the bus, scrambling over medians and edging my way along roads. But to say you don’t drive in LA is like saying “I don’t breathe.”

It’s nothing like walking, but occasionally when the road is emptying out and I see long, luxurious gaps up ahead, or I turn a corner and see a blank space for me to play with, accelerate into, I get a similar feeling in the car – a presence of mind, strangely empty of thought. Sometimes I like to cruise downhill, my foot hovering over the brake pedal, the breeze under my hair, and it’s like sailing and in those moments, I get it. I get California, and the invention of the car and why I’m here. I get the rush. And on the days that I don’t, I bake banana bread.

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Banana and Raisin Bread

Adapted from Nigella Lawson, How To Be a Domestic Goddess

100g raisins (or sultanas)

75ml dark rum, bourbon or PX sherry

175g plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

½ teaspoon salt

125g unsalted butter (melted)

150g caster sugar

2 large eggs

4 small very ripe bananas (mashed)

60g chopped walnuts (or pieces of dark chocolate)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Put the raisins and rum/bourbon (or Pedro Ximenez sherry) in a smallish saucepan and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat, cover and leave for an hour if you can, or until the raisins have absorbed most of the liquid, then drain.

Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas mark 3/325ºF and get started on the rest. Put the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a medium-sized bowl and, using your hands or a wooden spoon, combine well. If you don’t like the taste of bicarb then leave it out.

In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas. Then, with your wooden spoon, stir in the walnuts and/or chocolate, drained raisins and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each bit.

Scrape into a loaf tin (23 x 13 x 7cm / 9 x 5 x 3 inches) and bake in the middle of the oven for 1-1¼ hours. When it’s ready, an inserted toothpick or fine skewer should come out cleanish. Leave in the tin on a rack to cool, and eat thickly cut with a cup of strongly brewed builders’ tea.

Walnut bread

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

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God, I miss bread. I don’t eat it much anymore. Maybe it’s because so much of it is that pre-sliced, flaccid, crustless variety sweating into its plastic bag. But the real thing is always worth it no matter how much you long for sleep afterwards, your legs leaden and your eyes drooping like a bloodhound. We don’t eat as much bread as we once did, perhaps because we’re not going down the pit anymore, or walking up mountains on a regular basis. So we forget what sustenance it provides. And good bread is real food, a meal in itself.

I have a memory of bread, toasted. It was homemade. It came in a mound, brown and slightly dusty. It filled the room with the most extraordinary fragrance. The bread belonged to our new neighbours in Exeter. They were a family of five: two boys and a girl. She was my age. The fact they lived next door meant there was some sort of unspoken rule that their daughter should accompany me to school. I was about seven and I was new to the area, my parents freshly divorced. So I would hover in the doorway to the kitchen while they finished up their breakfast. And what a breakfast! I was still digesting my porridge, but I could have sat down and started all over again in this new place.

The smell of hot, cakey bread, the dark husks still evident on their plates, and jellied spoonfuls of the bitterest marmalade sliding over the top of creamy, salted butter – the combination almost brought me to my knees. It still does.

Freya – for that was her name –  was given the task of ‘walking me’ (like a dog) along the back lanes to school. She lasted all of a day doing this. But still she went through the charade of leaving the house with me, walking to the end of the street and then when the coast was clear leaving me there. Every day at the allotted time though, I hovered and inhaled. I think there were seeds in the bread; it smelled nutty. A kind of charcoal splendour drifted daily from the toaster. I felt weak with longing.

They had a cat called Orlando who was an orange ball of hatred and bile. Like the rest of the family he carried about him an unmistakable aura of status. Our cat, Smudge, never stood a chance. They fought daily, one paw resting on the fence for balance, the other taking slightly camp swipes at the other’s face. It was obvious who would win.

Freya when the time came went on to her posh, all-girls school and I went to the local comprehensive. I never saw her again. Not properly. We did occasionally bump into the family. Freya’s mum did contemporary dance as a hobby (her dance group were on the local news!). Freya’s dad – an orthodontist – fitted me and my brother with braces. What a start though every day to eat homemade bread, toasted and smothered in some gorgeous preserve. The five of them sat there like warriors. How could you ever be miserable when you had a family like that?

Walnut Bread

Adapted from Rick Stein’s Food Heroes

1 tbs dried yeast

1 tbs dark soft brown sugar

450 ml (15 fl oz) lukewarm water

600g (1 lb 6 oz) wholemeal/whole wheat stone-ground flour

2 teaspoons of salt

20 g (¾ oz) butter, melted

40 g (1½ oz) walnut pieces

2 tsp sesame seeds or sunflower seeds

1 egg, beaten

To make a ferment or ‘sponge’, whisk the yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar in 150 ml (5 fl oz) of the lukewarm water. The temperature is important; too hot and it will kill the yeast, but too cold and the yeast won’t activate. It needs to be ‘finger hot.’ The best way to achieve this is to measure two-thirds cold tap water, pour into a jug and top up with one-third boiling water.

Leave the yeast to bubble in a warm place until the surface has about 2 cm (¾ in) of froth on it. It will take about 15 minutes. It should begin bubbling after about 5 minutes – if it doesn’t, the chances are the yeast won’t work. Put the flour, remaining sugar and salt in a large bowl. Pour on the yeast ferment, the remaining water and the melted butter, and mix together until you have a soft, sloppy dough. Knead for about 5 minutes, adding the walnuts right at the end. You can toast the walnuts lightly in a dry pan beforehand if you would like to accentuate their richness in the bread, and also throw in a few more if you like abundance.

Cut the dough in half and form 2 fat sausage shapes. Put them into 2 buttered 450 g (1 lb) loaf tins. Cover each with cling film/plastic wrap or put in a large plastic bag and leave in a warm place for about 45 minutes, until the dough has risen to the top.

Preheat the oven to 230C/450F. Wash the tops of the loaves gently with egg (the dough can easily deflate) and sprinkle with the seeds. Bake in the centre of the oven for 25-30 minutes. Remove the loaves from their tins and return them to the oven for a further 5 minutes to crisp up. Leave to cool on a wire rack. Wrap in cling film/plastic wrap and freeze if you are not going to eat them right away.

Walnuts and flour

Walnuts admittedly belong to the quieter, fall months. I hope you will forgive this seasonal lapse – I wrote this during a white-hot, muggy spell in LA when it felt as if the earth would crack and we would be showered with all our possessions. The smell of autumn – hot bread, wet grass and cool cheeks – seemed preferable.

Now to flour – I know it seems obvious, but you can’t make good bread with the substandard stuff. Fresh, stone-ground whole wheat flour will transform a loaf from okay to unforgettable. Because stones grind the flour more finely than metal cylinders, there are more bran particles in the bread, which gives it a more pronounced flavour and texture (that lovely crunch). The germ is also more present, enhancing the flour’s nutritional value. The bread doesn’t last as long, though, because of the high oil content, so you have to eat it quickly (shame).

Peach cake

10 Tuesday Jul 2012

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Continuing the cake inventory I started last week, I think this may be The Best Cake I’ve Ever Made. This expression gets bandied about a lot, I admit, and often I make pronouncements that later have to be revised, such as my adolescent belief that Five Star (a pop combo from Romford who all looked like versions of Michael Jackson) were “brilliant.”

That said, I think this is one of the best cakes I’ve made so far, and I take no credit for it at all. It’s all Nigel Slater, except for the almond extract and a redeployment of the blueberries. I’ve always been a fan of almonds – the only drawback being that an excess of ground almonds in a cake can make all the ingredients collapse into a kind of almond-induced stupor. I love moist, but I don’t really want a cake to drip. The almond’s strength is that it mitigates against the dryness of flour. Whenever I’ve made an all-flour cake, a few hours after it’s cooled it’s like eating hunks of stale bread. And dry cake is always disappointing, no matter how much you try to bury it beneath an avalanche of icing. Too much ground almond though, and it’s wet sand, so balance is all. This recipe captures the perfect ratio of crumbly and cakey with an almond-rich warmth.

Now to the idea of peaches and sponge – it feels as if the textures would be at war with one another. However, the peaches hang in the cake, discrete, plump and surprising. And because stone fruit and almonds are related (they belong to the Drupe family), the flavours speak sympathetically to each other. Of course, most of the fruit falls to the bottom of the cake – I would love to know how to prevent this: maybe make the pieces smaller – but apart from this one aesthetic gripe, it is a thing of gentle, rustic beauty and our guests ate it in silence. Always a good sign. The smell is wondrous, it is the pale golden-brown of a wheat field and icebergs of peach are still visible through the sponge.

In Nigel Slater’s version, the blueberries and peaches are all jumbled up together, but the blueberry needs its own stage, I feel. It is the colour of midnight, a sombre, ink-blue (Robert Frost said “I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot”), and I don’t want it to have to share the limelight. Its true home is the American cobbler, and it seems happiest when it can seep and bubble, turning a deep, hot, liquid pink. I’ve used it here as a compote to douse the ice cream. Many feel it lacks the acidic surge, the sheer clout of other berries, and it can underwhelm. I have added lemon juice and bay leaves to the compote to counter this. It is very fine.

Peach Cake

Adapted from Nigel Slater, Summer Cake Recipes, The Observer

Serves 8-10

175g butter, softened

175g golden caster sugar

225g ripe peaches

2 large eggs at room temperature

175g self-raising flour (or 1 tsp baking powder for every 125g of plain flour)

100g ground almonds

1 tsp grated orange zest

a few drops of almond extract

150g blueberries (optional)

Method

Butter and line the base of a 20cm (8 in) loose-bottomed cake tin with baking paper. Set the oven at 170C/350F.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Peel, halve, stone and roughly chop the peaches. If the peaches are very ripe, the skin will peel off easily. Otherwise, scald them in boiling water, lift out using a slotted spoon, and peel off the skin when it has cooled slightly. Beat the eggs lightly then add, a little at a time, to the creamed butter and sugar. If there is any sign of curdling, stir in a tablespoon of the flour.

Mix the flour and almonds together and fold into the mixture, in two or three separate lots. Add the orange zest and almond extract, and once they are incorporated add the chopped peaches and blueberries (if using).

Scrape the mixture into the cake tin and bake for about 1 hour. Test with a skewer – if it comes out relatively clean, then the cake is done. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes or so in the tin, run a palette knife around the edge, then slide out on to a plate, decorating as the fancy takes you; fresh berries, fruit compote, ice cream, thin single cream, the possibilities are endless. This is also lovely for breakfast.

Blueberry Compote

Adapted from Jane’s Grigson’s Fruit Book

1lb blueberries

Grated zest and juice of a lemon

¼ tsp ground cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick

¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg

Pinch of salt

60g/2oz/¼ cup cane sugar or maple sugar

2 bay leaves

1 tsp cornstarch or arrowroot

Method

Put sugar, spices, cornstarch, salt and bay leaves into a heavy saucepan, and mix together with 150ml (5 fl oz/⅔ cup) water. When smooth, put in the blueberries and set over a moderate heat. Stir until the liquid clears and thickens. Add extra water if you want a runnier consistency. Stir in the zest and lemon juice gradually to taste. Let it cool. Keep chilled. The flavours will intensify over time.

Addendum added 20/7/12

This blueberry compote also makes a glorious jam. Place it over a medium high heat and reduce until the liquid is about half. A couple of splashes of balsamic vinegar and a sprig of basil or tarragon also lifts the flavours and makes the blueberry sparkle. Pot it up and keep in the fridge.

 

Floury fingers – in memory of cake

03 Tuesday Jul 2012

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I recently read about a three year old French child who bakes her own cupcakes. I imagine she needs help putting them in the oven, but apart from that she’s her own pastry chef. Much has been written recently about the difference between French and American children, and the way the French like to ignore their offspring.

I remember teaching English to a Parisian lady (and mother) who told me outright that she found ‘pre-language’ children uninteresting. They were simply beneath her until they could find the right words to keep her in the room. So the idea of a small child not just able to feed herself, but preparing baked goods was interesting to me. The French idea is that children should learn to be self-sufficient from a young age, resourceful and able to deal with periods of boredom and frustration – periods of aloneness, without setting fire to themselves or the house.

I too have memories of long, starchy afternoons, when time would linger and there was nothing much to do and no one around. This was before the days of constant adult supervision –  or in the words of the late, great Nora Ephron, before parenting became “a participle.” My refuge was reading, and making concoctions from scrag ends of food and my mother’s baking chocolate, which was like snacking on tar. It wasn’t just unsweet, but rock hard, greasy and impossible to either bite into or break off. I think she got it from a wholesaler called Norman’s in Budleigh Salterton. I don’t remember it ever being employed in a cake, but perversely for something inedible, she always hid it so it could only ever be accessed by balancing on a stool, hoisting myself up onto the counter and rummaging through packets of dessicated coconut and paprika until my hand landed on a wrapped lump the texture and weight of a horse-shoe. I cut my gums on it.

My nana from Australia sent me my first cook books. Floury Fingers by Celia Hinde did interesting things with fondant, but left me with a lifelong suspicion of cup sizes. The second book, though, became my friend, babysitter and an endless source of material both for my cooking life and beyond.

It was called the Kids’ Own Book of Stories and Things to Do. It was an absolute treasure trove. I think it was seasonal because one section was all about ice lollies and then another one had pictures of snow and mittens. There were stories of betrayal, wallabies, children of different ethnic backgrounds, slides, kites and all sorts. I loved the recipes the best and returned year after year to try them out. I rarely had the right ingredients. Sugar was banned in our house, except for muscovado that turned tea to treacle, though it was nice on porridge. We kept goats, whose warm (and occasionally hairy) milk softened our cornflakes in a way that I can only describe as off-putting. Raspberries were picked fresh from the bush for breakfast. There was ratatoullie and lambs’ brains. I wasn’t particularly appreciative.

What I wanted was cake. Preferably with thick slopes of icing and cut into giant-sized wedges. I do remember being terribly sick but still managing to swallow a few slabs of chocolate cake at another child’s birthday party, the sweat beading across my brow, twin flares of fiery red on each cheek. So slabs it must be here – as an homage to what I would have baked had I had the requisite ingredients. I did my best. I made chocolate logs that my dad said looked like dog turds, and rock cakes that lived up to their name. Had I not had huge swathes of time to explore, I probably would not have made them at all, so I’m grateful I was allowed to get on with the business of childhood without too many interruptions.

I am still in search of the perfect cake, even now. Something you can eat for breakfast (toasted, with butter), for elevenses, or brunch, for afternoon tea, and of course, for pudding. Beginning with this cherry-almond loaf cake, the cataloguing has officially begun.

Now’s the time for cherries – the Bing variety has that deep, glossy coat, almost mahogany in hue, but any cherry can be made into a decent compote. The trick is no water, only a little sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar. The cherries should keep their shape and not be overcooked. If you already have a jar of such things, or you have some (preferably undyed) glacé cherries, you can skip this bit.

Cherry compote

Adapted from Lindsey Shere, Chez Panisse Desserts

1lb ripe cherries

2 tbs sugar

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Method

Put the cherries, stems and all, in a colander, pick out any bad ones, rinse and pat dry. Put them in one layer in a pan. Sprinkle the fruit with sugar and shake over a medium high heat for about 5-10 minutes. The sugar will melt and the cherries will feel soft to the touch. Don’t go to mush.  Sprinkle with the balsamic vinegar, and shake for a minute or so more. Scrape the cherries, together with their juice, into a container and let them cool before chilling. You can serve them as they are (they love ice cream), or stone and stem them for use in the cake.

Cherry-almond loaf cake

Adapted from Nigella Lawson, How To Be a Domestic Goddess

Here, I’ve reverted to grams; going back to my roots.

200g cherries (stoned, stemmed and halved)

250g self-raising flour

(or add 1tsp of baking powder to every 125g/4oz of plain flour)

225g softened butter

175g cane sugar

3 large eggs, beaten

2-3 drops of almond extract

100g ground almonds

6tbs milk

9x5ins or 23x13x7cm loaf tin, lined and buttered

Method

Preheat the oven to 325F/170C. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten eggs and almond extract, alternating with the flour and ground almonds until it’s all one. Fold in the cherries, and then the milk and spoon the thick mixture into the loaf tin. Bake for ¾ – 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the pan on a wire rack until completely cooled. Makes 8-10 slabs.

p.s I read about the cupcake-baking three year old in The New Yorker. Here’s the whole article if you want to read on.

Purple-heart

22 Tuesday May 2012

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It’s the colour: that deep, baked-in pink. Magenta, leaning to purple, almost black at its heart. When you cut it, it bleeds, staining like a mulberry. Lusty, earthy, sublime, it’s the most medieval of vegetables. Juiced raw, it’s fresh and lemony. Roasted, it becomes silkily black. Left in the oven overnight and eaten in the morning, tenderly wizened, it’s perfect with broken bacon and some goat’s cheese. Of course it’s brilliant in chocolate cake. Damp and glottal.

It’s a bit of a brute, though, at first glance. The shaggy skin slips off like a coat once boiled or baked, and then it’s much prettier in the altogether –  glossy and vibrant. It shares its pigment, betalain, with bougainvillea, those papery flowers that froth over walls everywhere in LA. And the sweetness, noticeable in all root vegetables and unmistakable here, comes from its cousin, the sugar beet.

It’s interesting to me that even when I’m writing about vegetables, I’m still writing about sugar. Apparently, we have evolved to like sweet things, to seek them out, and our quest has aided our evolution and survival. I wonder how Jaffa Cakes fit into this paradigm. I remember my brother hiding them under the bed and behind the sofa, the tell-tale crackle of cellophane, that slippery sleeve of cakes, all the more delectable for being contraband. I too was a hoarder, a squirreler of chocolate and sweets. Cadbury’s Creme Eggs at dawn, that kind of thing. Now, when it comes to sugar, I’m like a bloodhound – a sugarhound, if you will. I’m forever attuned.

The sweetness and texture of beets – a sort of ‘wet bite’ – comes from the combination of starch and sugar. Moist heat – boiling or steaming – quickly softens the starches and keeps the colour pure, and the taste direct and clean. Dry heat – roasting – creates a darker, fuller, more complex flavour. This is where the beet’s sugars start to caramelize and you get that burnished, bronzed sweetness. This is the Maillard reaction, and apparently accounts for why we are all addicted to French fries.

Incidentally, it may feel a bit late to be talking about beets (beetroot to you in Blighty), and they’ve certainly peaked, but they’re still everywhere in farmers’ markets in LA. Check for freshness by buying them with their tops attached, and leave about an inch of the top and stem on for cooking so the colour doesn’t leach out. Look at the greens as well, and avoid anything limp or drab.

Chocolate Beet Cake

Inspired by Nigel Slater, Tender

The beets translate here into glorious dankness. Moist but not cloying. Good quality chocolate is important, as is the cocoa powder. The accompanying crème fraîche is a nod to the sour cream used alongside Eastern European beetroot dishes, and is definitely not an afterthought.

8oz (250g) beets, unpeeled

7oz (200g) dark chocolate (60-70 percent cocoa solids)

4tbs/60ml hot espresso (or water)

7oz (200g) room temperature butter, cubed

1 cup (135g) plain flour

3tbs very good quality cocoa powder

1 heaped tsp baking powder

5 eggs, at room temperature

1 cup (200g) golden caster sugar/superfine sugar

(or give ‘normal’ sugar a quick whizz in the coffee grinder)

Pinch of sea salt

Method

Lightly butter an 8in (20cm) cake tin and line the base with baking parchment. Put the beets in cold water in a deep pan and bring to the boil. They will be ‘knifepoint’ tender in about 45 minutes, depending on the size. The smaller the better – look for ones the shape of lightbulbs. Drain and let them cool under running water. Peel them using a kitchen towel, or your fingers if they’re made of asbestos. Blitz in a blender to a rough puree.

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C). Break the chocolate into bits the size of gravel. Melt the chocolate pieces in a small bowl resting over a pan of barely simmering water. Don’t stir. When it looks almost melted, turn off the heat, but leave the bowl over the hot water and pour over the espresso. Stir it once. Add the cubed butter to the melted chocolate, and leave to soften, pushing it down under the chocolate if need be.

Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder in a separate bowl. Remove the bowl of chocolate now from the heat and let it cool for a few minutes. Whisk the egg yolks together briskly and then add to the melted chocolate. Mix in the beet puree. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then gradually rain in the sugar. Fold the egg white mixture into the melted chocolate. Do not overmix, but go deep into the goo with a large metal spoon, using a figure-of-eight movement. Fold in the dry ingredients. Scrape the batter into the prepared cake tin, smoothing the top, and reduce the heat of the oven to 325C (160C) and bake for about 40 minutes, or until the sides are firm and set, but the centre still has a little wobble to it. Let the cake cool completely, then remove it from the tin. Serve with crème fraîche.

Roasted beets with balsamic vinegar  

From Nigel Slater, Real Food

Good to kill two birds with one stone and boil a load of beets for the cake and this dish too. Once you start this, it will quickly become a necessary part of your cooking life during beet season. Initially it will feel like too much work. This gripe quickly fades on eating.

Serves 2

6 small beetroot, with stems and tops on, if possible

A dash of olive oil

2 medium-sized onions, peeled

A sprinkling of balsamic vinegar

Method

Follow the instructions for boiling the beets above. Peel away the skins – using a kitchen towel if you have some – and cut each beet into wedges and toss them in a roasting tin with a little olive oil. Cut the onions into segments from root to tip. Add them to the beets and cover the roasting tin with foil. Roast in a hot oven (200C/400F) for thirty minutes. Remove the foil, add a dash of balsamic vinegar – not too much, just enough to add some depth and character – and a little salt. Return to the oven for a further thirty minutes, this time without the foil, until the beets are starting to brown and curl up. Serve with roast meat. Also, goat’s cheese is very nice. I have a feeling Roquefort would be pretty good too.