SHF # 43: coconut lime cake with mango and mascarpone lime mousse

Like Helen, of the beautiful blog tartelette, I'm a big fan of anything citrus. So when she chose citrus as the theme of this month's Sugar High Friday, I couldn't have been happier. And I immediately got Harry Nilsson's coconut, one of my all-time favourite songs, stuck in my head. I first heard it when watching Practical Magic and I have actually watched the film again just for the song. It's sweet and silly and makes me laugh. I can thoroughly recommend this song, especially on a blegh and grey day. So, SHF. I wanted to make something pretty and tropical, and after going through some cookbooks, browsing a few blogs, and taking cue from the coconut song, I decided on a combo of coconut and lime with mango, in the shape of little cakes with fruit and mousse layer. Something I'd never tried before, but it didn't look all that difficult - baking a cake? I could do that half asleep. Chopping up some fruit? Easy peasy. And whipping up a mousse? five minutes' work.

For the cake base, I chose Delia's coconut lime cake. A bit risky, since I hadn't made this cake before, but I find that Delia usually delivers. And deliver she did. The cake didn't rise very high, but it turned out quite well - I knew I could trust our Delia. The mango, unfortunately, didn't deliver. Instead of the sweet juicy and orangey-yellow fruit I was imagining, I got a hard pale and rather sour mango. That will teach me for buying mangoes out of season I guess. I should have waited for those incredibly sweet small yellow Pakistani mangoes I will find at my local market in a month or so. But all was not lost, I added a few spoons of sugar and some vanilla bean paste, which made it ok. Not great, but more than edible.

For the mousse, I browsed Bea's and Helen's archives, but all the recipes I found had gelatine in them, and I have a very strong dislike for the stuff. A google search only returned gelatine-based mousses as well, so I took a risk, and luckily it worked. I used Helen's mascarpone lime mousse recipe, but left out the gelatine and the lime zest (another thing I don't like), without changing anything else. I figured, with the whipped egg whites and whipped cream, the mousse would set in the fridge. After all, my chocolate mousse and tiramisu set in the fridge, so no reason why this mousse wouldn't set either. And I was right, phew. It might not work in hot or humid climes though. I guess that's the one good thing about living in grey and temperate London.


Getting the whole thing assembled took a bit of fiddling, but wasn't too hard. Of course I started with grand plans: I had wanted to add a frozen cone with coconut yoghurt and mango purée, like this one, put a glaze on the cakes, and add a cilantro syrup. But in between all the weekend DIY, finally getting to meet our friends' new baby, and getting engaged (yes, after almost 12 years together S proposed), I didn't get around to executing all those grand plans. They will have to wait for another time. That evening, S and I cracked open a bottle of champagne and had a simple but lovely pasta dinner, followed by these cakes were our dessert. Surprisingly, S really liked it. Separately, the three components weren't great: the cake was a bit fibrey with all the desiccated coconut, the mango not ripe and the lime mousse not very sweet, but together they were just right. A sweet end to a wonderful day...

whoosh*

* that’s the sound of March flying past. And come to think of it, a good chunk of April as well.

I’ve been a very bad blogger these last few months, shame on me. Another whole month has passed without any baking or experimenting. The only action in the kitchen was that of an entire colony of mice, running around in plain daylight and eating everything in sight. Greedy little buggers. They’ve gone now; old-fashioned mousetraps with a bit of peanut butter did just the trick. I’m sure there were more than the four we caught, but the rest probably got fed up and decided to move somewhere else.

Also, last month S and I survived – barely – two very traumatic trips to Ikea. We’re scarred for life now, the mere mention of something blue and yellow Scandinavian and flatpack furniture reduces us to gibbering wrecks. Seriously, what is it with that store? Their website says everything you need is in stock, but the shelves in the warehouse are completely empty. And the personnel at the information desks think it’s much more important to chat with their mates and yell abuse at their co-workers than, I don’t know, helping out clients maybe? We did eventually manage to get an entire wardrobe puzzled together, miraculously nothing was lost when we had it delivered, we lived to tell the tale and our bedroom looks much tidier now. But those nine hours of our lives, we’ll never get those back.

Oh, and that long bank holiday weekend in March I had so many plans for? Three guesses how that was spent. Yep, even more DIY, resulting in lovingly restored sash windows, looking absolutely yummy. Sash windows aren’t edible though.

So I figured it was high time I put on my apron and baked something, before I completely lose skills like whipping egg whites. Or switching on the oven. And my good friend Claudia was just the woman to provide me with inspiration. I had been meaning to make her lemon and lavender pound cake for ages – in fact, it was the recipe that immediately caught my eye the first time I ever browsed through her book – but somehow I always got distracted trying other things. Not this time though.

The recipe is that of a very simple and basic pound cake – quite different from the one I normally make though, so it was a good ‘exercise’ to compare techniques and results. This one is certainly easier and a bit less work, withouth much difference in taste. I adapted the recipe a little bit: I omitted the lemon zest because I really don’t like lemon zest and cut down the quantities of the lavender quite a bit as I thought using the full four tablespoons might be a bit overpowering. The resulting cake was wonderfully moist and lemony with just a hint of lavender. I was convinced S wouldn’t like it, because of the lavender, but he obligingly tasted a little piece. And then… his eyes lit up, he started licking his lips and rubbing his belly, said ‘yum!’ and cut himself another piece. Maybe that 'whoosh' was also the sound of pigs flying past...

lemon and lavender pound cake
adapted from Claudia Fleming's The Last Course

200g butter
5 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup self-rising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon dried lavender

for syrup: 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup lemon juice

Melt butter with lavender, leave to infuse for 10 minutes, strain, discard lavender, and set aside to cool.
Beat eggs with sugar until thick and pale. Sift 1/3 of flour into egg mixture until thoroughly combined. Fold in rest of flour in 2 batches. Whisk one cup of batter with vanilla extract and melted butter, then add this to remaining batter. Bake cake at 150˚C for 45 minutes.

Make syrup (bring to simmer in saucepan and cook until sugar is dissolved). When cake is ready, poke all over with skewer and brush with half the syrup. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, invert cake and brush bottom and sides. Reinvert and brush with remaining syrup. Enjoy.

lemon meringue pie – the Daring Bakers’ January challenge

Another month, another Daring Bakers challenge, and this month’s host – Jen, the Canadian Baker – chose lemon meringue pie. Now, I love me some lemon pie. I have a favourite, foolproof recipe, but it can’t hurt to try something a bit different once in a while. As usual, I left it to the last weekend to complete the challenge. S shopped for groceries, while I was stripping more paint off the woodwork.

With a pantry full of butter, sugar, eggs, lemon and cream, I fully intended to start baking. I even got as far as making the dough for the crust. And then… the call of the DIY became too strong to ignore. And so, by the end of the weekend, there was a lot of stripped wood, a ceiling without wallpaper on it, and not a lemon meringue pie in sight. Those lemons did come in handy though for our cocktail hour on Sunday evening…

Check out all the other Daring Bakers’ real pies here.

another weekend, another DIY project

Now that we’ve finished renovating the upstairs of our house – we have doors in our bedrooms! with doorknobs! and blinds! – S and I started all over again downstairs. Stripping awfully textured wallpaper off the ceiling (yes, the ceiling. Must be some kind of British thing), stripping a gazillion layers of paint off the woodwork, ripping out three layers of awful carpet, sanding wooden floors and completely overhauling the beautiful but neglected sash windows. I guess we could hire someone to do all the work for us, but it is very hard to find decently skilled craftspeople here without having to take out an extra mortgage to pay them. Plus I’m still upset about how the jobs we could not do ourselves were done by so-called professionals. And that was more than two years ago. Also I’m a bit of a control freak and I’d rather do everything myself, so I know it’s done properly. Which takes a lot of time. In addition to all the DIY I’ve also found myself in a spring-cleaning mood recently (must be the too warm weather we’re having here) itching to clean out cupboards, reorganise shelves etc.

So, loads to do at home and not much time for other things. But just enough time to bake something quick and easy: I had some left-over chocolate shortcrust pastry in the freezer, and a whole bunch of walnuts from my aunt’s garden. But no nutcracker. So what does one do in a DIY-filled, nutcracker-less home? Why, use a DIY tool as a nutcracker of course. I found a quick and easy Donna Hay recipe, et voilà, little butterscotch walnut tartlets.

S wasn’t a fan (but he doesn’t like walnut and he doesn’t like honey), so I brought some tartlets over to the neighbours, who were big fans. And told me I should open a pastry shop. And please could they be my test audience. I think they just want more sweets. Now, all I have to do is find a quick way of getting rid of the other stuff in my freezer, so I can start spring-cleaning there as well.


butterscotch tartlets
adapted from Donna Hay Magazine, issue 32

shortcrust pastry
30g unsalted butter
¼ cup double cream
¼ cup honey
1 cup walnuts

bake pastry in individual moulds (I used a muffin tin) and let cool on wire rack. Put butter, honey, cream and walnuts in a pan and heat gently until butter is melted. Up heat until caramelised (a few minutes) and pour filling in pastry shells. Top with some double cream and crushed instant coffee. Eat.

design dessert

Last weekend I finally got around to doing something with the sweet potatoes I'd had lying around for way too long - I don't use sweet potatoes all that often and all the lovely Thanksgiving posts I've been reading everywhere made me itch to try something new. I browsed through my cookbooks, thought about adapting and combining different recipes and was determined not to get myself into a catch-22 situation, where I end up making nothing at all because I'm unable to choose from all the possible dishes.

Also, I wanted to challenge myself a bit: I have a few cookbooks with complex dessert recipes, consisting of several components and looking oh so beautiful. Which I never get around to making, exactly because they're so complex. Not difficult - just a lot of work. Invariably, you need a gazillion different ingredients for all the parts, so it takes half a day doing the preliminary grocery shopping, another half day to make everything and when you're finished, the kitchen looks like a battlefield. And then, of course, just when you sigh and think 'that was ok', you take a last look at the recipe and you find that, under 'assembly' or 'presentation', a few more components and some complicated garnishes are thrown in for good measure.

So I often end up making just one component, rather than the whole dessert. Which tastes nice and looks fine, but not spectacular. And sometimes, you know, a girl just wants to show off and make something that looks as if it came out of a restaurant kitchen. This girl does anyway.

And so here it is, my first show-off (but no sweat) dessert: sweet potato and white chocolate flan on a gingersnap crust, sweet potato gnocchi and coconut custard, all flavoured with sweet massala spices. Very easy to make, because it doesn't use a million different ingredients, and looks like a million dollars. Just one warning: pretend you don't know how much butter goes into the whole thing.

Also, because the flan squares tasted rather nice all by themselves and because - in my mind anyway - the sweet potato thing has a decidedly American feel to it (plus they are not too showy by themselves and won't upstage a brand new house) I'm taking them to Peabody's housewarming party.


sweet potato flan squares
inspired by D & C Duby's Wild Sweets

100g roasted and mashed sweet potatoes
100g crushed gingersnaps (by all means, make them yourself if you want, but store-bought will do just fine)
195g + 25g butter
130g white chocolate
3 eggs
80 caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean extract
1 tsp sweet massala spices

line a baking tin (I used a 20 cm square one) with baking paper, making sure it the sides of the tin are covered as well. Melt 25g butter, mix with the crushed gingersnaps and spread evenly on the bottom of the tin. Melt butter with chocolate (I used the microwave, in 30 second bursts). Combine sweet potatoes with eggs, sugar, vanilla and massala, then fold in the chocolate mixture and stir until thoroughly combined. Pour mixture over gingersnap base and bake in oven (150˚C) for 30 minutes. Refrigerate until ready to use.

sweet potato gnocchi
inspired by Hidemi Sugino The Dessert Book

125g roasted and mashed sweet potatoes
50g plain flour
1/3 whole egg
1 tbsp coconut milk
caster sugar with pinch of sweet massala spices

combine all ingredients in mixing bowl until incorporated. Cover bowl and leave to rest in fridge for at least one hour. Flour work surface and roll dough into a log, about 1 inch diametre. Cut into half inch cubes and cook in boiling water (they are ready when they float). Coat in massala sugar mix.

coconut custard
adapted from here

1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1 tbsp cornstarch
3 egg yolks, beaten
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1 tsp sweet massala spices
1/6 cup sugar

Combine 1/4 cup coconut milk and cornstarch in a bowl and blend until smooth. Whisk in yolks, beating until smooth. Combine rest of coconut milk, vanilla, massala and sugar in a saucepan and carefully bring to a boil. When the mixture just boils, whisk a ladleful into egg mixture to temper it, then whisk this back into the cream mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Pour into jug and cool.

To assemble: dust flan squares with icing sugar, add a few gnocchi and a drizzle of custard.

potato bread

Another month has flown past, which means it's time for another Daring Bakers' challenge. This month, Tanna of My Kitchen In Half Cups chose potato bread - you'll find the recipe on her blog. As usual, I left it to the last minute to start baking, but this weekend was the only weekend this month I actually spent in my own home. One weekend I had to work, another weekend there was an interesting symposium, and last weekend S and I were in Antwerp, showing 'our' city to two friends, doing touristy things, and of course sampling lots of chocolate and beer. Such a hard job, playing tour guide!

When I told S I'd be making potato bread, he went 'seriously, potato bread? Why? Not so sure about that'. But by the time I switched off the oven and had him taste one of the rolls, he was singing an entirely different tune. And then... I told him he couldn't eat any more of it until the next day, because I wanted to take a decent daylight photograph. Which I couldn't take at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, because it gets dark ridiculously early these days (yes, I will probably keep complaining about this until, oh, April or so). We couldn't resist though, which is why the focaccia (brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, black pepper and rosemary from my garden) is mysteriously absent in the pics. We ate it all while watching Star Trek - it didn't survive Captain Picard's mission of the day and didn't live to see real daylight.

I often bake bread at weekends - it's just so much better than the stuff you can buy here, at least you know what goes in it, and you won't get a heart attack or break your tongue when trying to pronounce all the ingredients in pre-packed breads. I'd never tried potato bread though. And one thing I can now say: when you make potato bread, make sure you have someone at hand to flour the work surface and scrape the dough together because, boy, is this a sticky bugger!

This month I've been a good daring baker and stuck to the recipe. Well, almost stuck to the recipe, but no major cheating this time. I added the butter to the mashed potatoes instead of later on, because I didn't think I'd get the butter to distribute evenly otherwise. And I skipped the second rise for half of the bread: I forgot to buy fresh yeast, so had to make do with the dried, instant, fast-action stuff, which only needs to rise once (you knead your dough, shape it, let it rise and then put it straight in the oven). In the past, I have tried two rises with this yeast, but without success: after the first rise and re-kneading the dough it wouldn't rise again, resulting in a rather dense and heavy bread. There was plenty of dough to go around though, so I put half in a rectangular bread tin and plonked that in the oven straight after the first rise. The other half I reworked into smaller bread thingies and left for a second rise, ready to put in the oven after my first bread came out. And, this time, both methods worked equally fine.

Like I said, the dough is incredibly sticky - after the 5 cups of flour specified in the recipe, the dough is nowhere near dough-y enough to turn it out onto a floured work surface. But, following the instructions to a t, that's exactly what I did (I am a bit blonde sometimes). and that's also when having an S on stand-by came in incredibly handy. He kept on adding flour until my blob became a workable, silky smooth, elastic dough, out of which I got a loaf, a piece of focaccia and some rolls I sprinkled with sesame seeds, and cumin seeds.

Even if I say so myself, this was one of the best breads I've ever baked, and S wholeheartedly agreed. The taste took him right back to his childhood, because it tasted exactly like the 'ovenkoeken' he would eat at a local harvest festival. I will certainly bake this again - but next time I might try it the other way around. Usually when I bake bread I start with flour and add a liquid gradually, however this recipe started with 'potato water' to which flour is added - rather strange and more difficult I think. But the end result was more than worth it.

random pic of dead stuff in my garden

Check out all the other Daring Bakers' potato breads here.

Daring (cheating, last-minute) Baker

It’s amazing how time flies, especially when you spend one weekend at a friends’ cottage in the countryside (doing nothing all weekend but eating, sleeping, and walking the dog) and another weekend hosting friends who take over your kitchen to cook you a lovely, amazing and delicious Japanese meal. Such a hard life, I know.

After waving goodbye to our Japanese friends on Sunday morning (S duly made crepes for breakfast, the third weekend in a row), I realised I had only the rest of the day left to finish this month’s Daring Bakers challenge, hosted by Mary of Alpine Berry: bostini cream pie, which consists of vanilla custard, orange chiffon cake, and melted chocolate.

Having already missed last month’s challenge, I didn’t want to miss this month’s again, even though work has been insanely busy, my weekends filled with, you know, other things, and, last but not least, the fact I simply don’t like chocolate and orange combined. But time was running out, so prepare for a bit of cheating along the way.

The chiffon cake was an absolute doddle to make and came together in no time at all - I think it took the whole of 10 minutes to throw all the ingredients together. I halved the quantities, used leftover egg whites I had frozen a while ago, and used orange juice from a carton. Oh, and I left out the zest because I don’t exactly like zest of anything either. That’s my first bit of cheating, but it will get worse. Consider yourself warned. I used my new mini-brioche moulds and a muffin tin, and the resulting cakes were nicely fluffy, airy and moist. They did shrink and change shape after cooling tough, which I also experienced when I made the infamous strawberry mirror cake for the DB July challenge. I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of chiffon cake, but I can see how it might work in a ‘supporting role’, to bring together other components of a dessert. Chiffon cake by itself always seems to lack something to me, I find it just too sweet and bland. Having said that, the orange juice added a subtle bit of tang to it, which made it taste slightly more interesting.

Warning: major cheating coming up. I didn’t have that much time left to finish and photograph the dessert – now that the clocks have gone back an hour, it starts getting dark ridiculously early in the afternoon, which means less time to make decent photographs. I could have got up early this morning to make some pics of course, but I know myself too well to know that wasn’t going to happen. So I may, ahem, have made custard from a packet. Powder from the packet, milk, vanilla sugar, and some vanilla bean paste added to it, a bit of stirring et voilà, the quick ‘n easy cheat’s way to custard. But at least I’m being honest about it - my parents brought me up well that way, teaching me not to lie.

The chocolate and butter I melted together in a soup bowl in the microwave, which took another entire minute, and I dipped my little chiffon cakes in it to give them a chocolate coating.

After a few quick piccies I found a willing guinea pig in S - who had been hovering around the kitchen, his spoon at the ready, ever since he saw the custard. He loved it (but he loves everything that comes drenched in custard) until I mentioned that there was orange in the cake, and then he didn’t like it as much any more. I knew I wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t dislike it as much as I thought I would. The orange was rather subtle; the combination of soft fluffy cake with custard and chocolate makes for a very comforting dessert; the cake by itself tasted ok; I’ll have to fight S for the rest of the custard; and it was incredibly easy to make and present, which makes it perfect to show off at dinner parties. It’s just not very ‘me’, this dessert. But if you like chocolate and orange combined, by all means, give it a go.

You can check out all the other Daring Bakers’ efforts here.

milk chocolate and caramel tart – the Daring Bakers’ August challenge

From the moment I read the recipe Veronica and Patricia chose for this month’s DB challenge, I knew that this tart and I would make very good friends. Because, what’s not to like: chocolate hazelnut crust! Caramel! Chocolate cream! Not a drop of food colouring or a grain of gelatine in sight, just the bare minimum of no-nonsense instructions, and a recipe which didn’t generate leftovers enough to feed a small army. Apart from the crust that is, which made enough for three tarts, but the recipe duly mentions that and anyways it would be so easy to halve quantities for the crust recipe so it doesn’t count. Not that I halved the quantities, I just froze the leftovers so I can use them again in a few weeks or so. I originally planned to bake this tart when my family came to visit, but I was so frantically cleaning prior to their arrival I didn’t have enough time left to bake something as well. My parents, aunt and cousin didn’t get to sample this heavenly tart, but S’s and my work colleagues did. And they liked it. A lot.

Now, I may have purposefully ‘forgotten’ (ahem) to put cinnamon in the crust, but only because other Daring Bakers found it overwhelming and distracting from the chocolate. Which, in my book, is never a good thing. Nothing should ever distract from chocolate. Ever. I do like cinnamon, but I wasn’t convinced it would work in this tart and I was determined to love this tart (pease don’t take away my DB badge, pretty please!). I also had to substitute the ground hazelnuts with almonds, as I couldn’t find hazelnuts of the ground variety anywhere - I even went to the new ginormous Wholefoods in Kensington High Street. Also I don’t own any snazzy devices that could grind hazelnuts for me and I didn’t think my little hand held mixer would be up to this job. So almonds it was. I made the crust entirely without the aid of any electric appliances, partly because the butter was very soft anyway and partly because I made it at 11pm at night and didn’t want to wake the neighbours. The next day I rolled it quite thinly, as other DBs had experienced the crust rising exponentially. Just to make sure I stabbed it furiously with a fork and poured all my baking beans on top of it as well. I used a square, loose-bottomed tin and had no problems whatsoever rolling the dough over the square, unlike some other DBs who ended up with a brittle greasy dough, that needed to be patched onto the baking tin.

Making the caramel turned out to be really easy as well. I have heard quite a few horror stories involving caramel (massive splashing and horrible burns on forearms), so I was perhaps a bit too careful, but it all worked out nicely. Melting sugar I had done before, so I wasn’t afraid of that, but I made sure the heat was very low nonetheless. Of course the sugar seized up when I added the cream, but I continued to stir it over a low heat and it all came together nicely. I found it needed a bit longer in the oven than the suggested 15 minutes – after 15 minutes the edges had set but the centre was still liquid. Oh, and because I didn’t sculpt any edges on my crust and the crust shrank ever so slightly away from the edges of the tin during baking, the caramel of course dripped through the tin and onto the bottom of my oven, causing a terrible burnt smell which made me panic I had completely messed it up. But luckily I hadn’t, the caramel set beautifully and all I had left to do was whip up a chocolate mousse.

For the chocolate mousse, which was incredibly easy to make (and which I actually prefer to the one made with egg whites), I used a brand of fairtrade chocolate I only recently discovered: Divine milk chocolate with coffee. Since it was milk chocolate, and also since in my world chocolate, nuts and coffee are like a holy trinity, I figured I would not be breaking any DB rules. Plus I just knew this chocolate would be perfect for my tart.

Once the entire tart was finished, set and refrigerated, I cut it into rectangular individual servings and decorated the top with a single hazelnut and a shard of vanilla salt. Originally I had wanted to cover the hazelnuts in edible gold leaf, but I couldn’t find any in the shops and didn’t have enough time to order it online. But I was determined to have an elegant pastry, and even though the hazelnut was pretty enough by itself, the vanilla salt added a little extra oomph to the tart. Nut and salt got along wonderfully with each other and they lived happily ever after. No, not really, because the tart was a huge hit with everyone who tasted it and it didn’t survive very long at all. But it made all the people who ate it happy. And of course that’s the sole purpose of tarts in life.
Check out all the other Daring Bakers’ efforts here and the recipe here.

matcha cookies

Still trying to get through that humongous pile of laundry, but I couldn’t resist continuing my Japanese love affair and baking these bright green matcha cookies. I first saw them on Mae’s website; Fanny also made them and so did a whole bunch of other people. And all those people are definitely on to something, those cookies really are amazing – crumbly, buttery and very matcha-y.

Other than the fact these cookies are totally delicious and you simply must make them with the leftover matcha from when I urged you to make matcha ice cream (which remains my favourite, the cookies come in a close second), I’m afraid I don’t have a personal or interesting or funny story about these cookies. Those work issues are still dragging me down, I haven’t exactly been the most cheery person to be around these last couple of weeks, and I'm very guilty of seriously neglecting my blog. But if anything is going to cheer you up, it will be these scrumptious little matcha sweets!

Kelli from Lovescool, who makes these cookies for a living – lucky girl! – kindly provided the recipe on her website. She’s in the process of opening a shop in New York, which should be open next time I go there, and visiting that shop will be the very first thing I do.

grmph

translated in English: the Daring Bakers’ July challenge - strawberry mirror cake

A few months ago, I read something about a group of Daring Bakers, and then forgot about it again. But a month later, I found more Daring Baker stuff popping up on various blogs. And another month later, yet more of the same. By the time Martha’s darkest chocolate crepe cake came around, I found myself reading all the DB entries, which made for some very amusing reading. After that, I found myself keeping an eye on the DB blogroll and eagerly anticipating what they would make the next month. The Gateau St Honoré sounded rather scary, what with the puff pastry and pate à choux and all, but I thought it would be a nice challenge and encourage me to make things outside my comfort zone, so I asked them if they would have me (pretty please) and luckily enough, they had a little place for me available.

And so, this month, I prepared for my first challenge: strawberry mirror cake, chosen by Peabody's culinary concoctions. I printed the recipe, read it again and again and again and planned when to make the whole thing. It would be a challenge for me to follow the recipe to the letter (that’s a DB rule) but I was looking forward to trying something I’d never made before. Normally, when I make an American recipe, the first thing I do is reduce the sugar, as I usually find American recipes too sweet for me. Also I don’t really liked the idea of using red food colouring (I like my food all natural) and I can’t say I’m fond of gelatin - I’ve only used it a few times in the past, usually with disastrous results, and I don’t particularly like the way texture feels in my mouth. Plus I once did an evening course in conservation and restoration of paintings, where we would often use animal glue, which smells exactly the same as gelatin. But, as a true Daring Baker, I would fearlessly give it a go.

I have to admit though, I’m not that much of a cake eater, never have been and never will be - at birthdays and other occasions I always skip the cake part. Making and assembling the whole thing took ages and was a lot of bother (partly because I didn’t have all the required equipment), and I wasn’t really impressed when I tasted it (but that’s because I’m not a cake eater). It must have been good though, because S took the finished cake to work and his colleagues absolutely loved it.

To me, this cake ended up being one of those things that sound good on paper, but somehow don’t work. Like clothes in a shop that look fabulous on the hanger, but are not a good fit when you try them on. But I am glad I did try this recipe on; at least now I know it’s not a good fit for me. I would try something similar again, maybe with a pound cake or a less sweet sponge and a mousse that doesn’t need gelatin. The mirror bit I think is something would look quite pretty on any cake, so I will try that again as well.

Here’s how my weekend of cake making went down.

Friday night I made the sponge - I don’t have a jelly roll pan, so I used a 24cm round spring form and baked two separate sponges. The first one was a disaster, which I blame on my oven. I’m sure that in new and well-behaved ovens, baking a sponge for 7 minutes at 230˚C works just fine, but in my oven that resulted in a burnt top and liquid centre. Attempt number two, baked for 20 minutes at 150˚C was somewhat more successful, but the bottom of the sponge remained rather sticky. I confess I did substitute the vanilla essence with vanilla bean paste, because I had a whole bottle of the latter and none of the former. Hope that doesn’t mean I broke the rules.

Saturday I went grocery shopping for eggs, strawberries, sugar and cream. Being half space out on antibiotics must have messed up my intellectual capacities (such as adding up and reading) though, because I ended up buying way too many strawberries. And instead of 1 1/2 cup’s worth of cream, I bought 1 1/2 pints worth of cream. Also I was feeling quite sick, so I didn’t get around to making the cake that day.

Sunday I was feeling a bit better, so I started the day full of hope and good intentions to get the whole cake together. First thing was making a new sponge, as the one I’d made on Friday had gone stale. The strawberry juice and Bavarian cream were fairly easy to make, only I misread the recipe (damn those antibiotics) and found out afterwards I hadn’t added enough gelatine to the Bavarian cream. And I only have a tiny sieve with fine mesh, so it took me ages to strain the strawberry purée, so now a proper-sized is very high up on my wishlist. The red food colouring did make the Bavarian cream a bit more pink rather than the original - but natural! - muddied pink colour. Around 7pm I was quite fed up but finally ready to assemble the cake. I used an 18cm round spring form (I didn’t buy any new equipment for this recipe, but just used the things I already have), with a cardboard circle covered in aluminium foil at the bottom (very handy tip!) and a ‘collar’ of baking paper all around. I thought I had some vanilla vodka left, but I didn’t, so I didn’t put any liqueur in the soaking syrup at all. The four layers of the cake already came higher than the spring form - luckily I had added a collar to it.

Monday I finally added the mirror (I didn’t add any food colouring to it, because I thought it had an all natural beautiful intense red colour already). By then I was so fed up with it all, I couldn’t be bothered to do something about the bubbles in the mirror. Nor did I feel like adding any decoration to the cake at all. I snapped a few quick piccies (maybe I should have cut the top of my sponge, because the browned top made a dark line in my cake), ate a piece and was not impressed.

Tuesday I made S take the whole shebang into work and told him I didn’t want to see a single crumb of it ever again. And I threw the recipe printout in my paper recycling bin, feeling strangely satisfied while doing that.

Check out the other Daring Bakers' cakes here.

Meeta's monthly mingle: I scream for ... Summer

Meeta’s July is (not just hot but) HOT and she wants us all to scream for ice cream at her monthly mingle. Unfortunately the UK weather gods have other ideas about our summer, and with the wind howling outside and the rain battering the windows I think I’ll be screaming for sun rather than ice cream. However, I’m not one to sit moping around being grumpy about the weather, and so, by lack of a decent summer outside, I thought I could at least try to create a hot and tropical summer inside. And that’s exactly what I did last weekend. Plus I decided I might as well challenge myself a bit and make something outside my comfort zone: coconut sorbet.

I’ve never been a fan of coconut, except in (Thai style) curries. I simply love the combination of hot curry paste with creamy coconut milk, it’s incredibly easy to make and it features often on my dining table. But other things with coconut, no thank you. When I was a child, we used to have an old Quality Street sweets tin in the cupboard, which would always contain mini Milky Way, Mars and Bounty. My brother and I would eat the Mars and Milky Way, and the Bounty was for my dad. If I remember well, he took one in his lunch box every day and also had one after dinner (in recent years he has moved on to ice cream for dessert). I also remember trying it once, after which experience my five-year-old self decided that I hated coconut. I can still feel that dry, fibre-y taste of desiccated coconut in my mouth, so it comes as no surprise I tend to avoid any sweets that have coconut in them.

But now, almost twenty-five years later, I thought it was time to change that and broaden my horizons a little. I chose and adapted a coconut sorbet recipe from Claudia Fleming’s Last Course and was inspired by an old Donna Hay Magazine to make ice cream sandwiches. I was also determined to try Jen’s amazing lemongrass, ginger and sesame cookies, for which I just happened to have all the ingredients in my pantry. Of course, Jen’s recipe left me with two unused egg whites, perfect for coconut meringues (another first for me). I didn’t think I would actually like these, with the shredded coconut in the meringue mixture, but I surprised myself by actually thinking they weren’t too bad. The sorbet on its own is very rich and creamy – not bad (I think it will be a hit with my dad when he comes to visit next month), but best paired with something else. Both ‘sandwich’ combinations worked well; the meringue one was incredibly coconut-y with the meringue providing a light and airy crunch; whereas in the cookie sandwich the creamy coconut and spicy cookie combination provided a more balanced and complex taste.

I don’t think I’ll find myself craving or making this coconut thingy very often, but I spent a nice afternoon experimenting, created a tropical Sunday in my kitchen and I’m now less hesitant to use coconut in desserts. And, in case you’re wondering where the British summer is hiding, shhh, don’t tell anyone, but I’m keeping it in my freezer.

coconut sorbet
inspired by Claudia Fleming’s Last Course*

2 cups coconut milk
1 cup shredded coconut
1/3 cup sugar
a squeeze of lime

Mix coconut milk with sugar and shredded coconut and bring to a boil. As soon as it boils and sugar is dissolved, take the pan off the heat and cover with clingfilm for about half an hour, to infuse the flavours. Sieve into a container, add lime juice and chill in the fridge overnight. Sieve again and freeze, stirring every half hour or so until frozen (or, if you’re lucky and have an ice cream maker, churn in your machine).

*I changed Claudia’s recipe considerably, which presented me with a few questions: when does ‘adapted from’ become ‘inspired by’? And at what point does a recipe become your own? After all, Claudia Fleming must have got her recipe from somewhere as well.

coconut meringues
from the Donna Hay magazine, issue 31, Feb/Mar 2007

2 egg whites
½ cup caster sugar
½ teaspoon white vinegar
2 tablespoons desiccated coconut

Whip egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gradually add sugar and vinegar until mixture is thick and glossy, fold in desiccated coconut. Spoon onto a baking sheet (I used cookie cutters for a round shape) and smoothen tops. Bake for 20 minutes on 120˚C. leave to cool in oven for 30 minutes.

ginger and lemongrass cookies
from Milk and Cookies

I had to grind most of the spices myself, not having any powdered versions on hand. I also used freshly grated ginger, and the palm sugar I had was very moist (it wasn’t a lump that needed grating), which resulted in a rather wet and sticky dough. I had to add an extra half cup or so of flour to get the cookie dough to hold together and be workable, and it still had a rather strange texture (to which S remarked ‘well, what did you expect, making strange dough like that.’). The finished cookies came out of the oven just fine though, and they tasted of Christmas.

cookies for S*

* I was going to title this post ‘my name is Inne and I’m a chocoholic’ but I baked these cookies especially for S and I only ate the sorry unsightly one anyway. Plus another one, to make sure it tasted the same as the first one. And then a few more the next day, to see how the flavours had developed. Strictly for quality control purposes, really. Really!

Saturday I baked S a batch of choc chip cookies. Nothing fancy, just butter, sugar, flour and chocolate. Lots of chocolate. As I’ve mentioned before, S is very much a chocolate and vanilla kind of guy, and I thought he could do with a batch of these cookies to offset all the non-chocolate and vanilla things I make him eat so regularly.

There’s really not much to say about these cookies, except that they are extremely chocolate-y and also rather butter-y, with a crisp bite and large crumb. And they tasted even more chocolate-y the next day.

I was of course tempted to add cardamom to the cookie dough, or coffee, or maybe even some chilli flakes, but I successfully restrained myself. These cookies were for S after all. And based on the fact I saw him sneaking towards the cookie jar quite a few times and saying ‘mmmm, yummy’, licking his lips and patting his belly, methinks he liked them. Which is a good thing, because I’ve got lots of non-chocolate and vanilla recipes lined up for the next few weeks.

Very chocolate-y choc chip cookies
I searched the internet for a generic cookie recipe, tweaked it substantially and added tons of chocolate to it

100g unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
pinch of salt
½ cup chocolate (I used a mix of cocoa nibs, plain, milk and white, which I chopped into chunks myself)

cream butter and sugar together. Add salt, flour and cocoa powder and mix until the dough resembles bread crumbs/pebbles. Add the chocolate chips and shape into a log with your hands. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least one hour. Heat oven to 160˚C, cut log into discs and bake for about 15 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Enjoy.

birthday baking (and Meeta's monthly mingle)

no, not a Tiffany's box...

When I asked my friend A what she wanted for her birthday, her answer was: ‘those cookies you made for my birthday last year were really good’ so cookies it was. The ones I made her last year are a firm favourite of mine – cardamom shortbread – but I couldn’t really bake her the same ones this year, could I? I was thinking maybe a few different sweets, with different tastes and textures, assembled in a nice box. A box was found – baby blue, which made A exclaim ‘That looks like a Tiffany’s box!’ Lucky for me, she wasn’t too disappointed that the goodies were of the edible rather than the diamond kind.

Of course there had to be something chocolate-y – I do have my Belgian-ness to live up to after all – so I decided on truffles. Coffee-cardamom truffles to be exact. Which I made, ironically, with British chocolate. But only partially; I used Belgian chocolate as well. Besides, it was dark espresso Green & Black’s chocolate, and there simply is no excuse necessary, ever, for Green & Black’s chocolate. Half the truffles I coated in unsweetened cocoa powder, the other half in the cocoa nibs I finally found at Wholefoods on my last trip to New York – after various unsuccessful shopping expeditions all around London in search of the elusive cocoa nib.

And whaddyaknow, now that Fresh & Wild here in London has been taken over by Wholefoods, they sell cocoa nibs. I’m not sure I still like the shop – it seems so much more soulless, there is much more plastic packaging and lots of fruit & veg are flown in from faraway places like Kenya and Peru, rather than the locally sourced produce they used to sell, but they do seem to have more products on offer. Like cocoa nibs. And jars of lovely caramelised shredded peppers, that go perfect with brie and basil on ciabatta. Mmm, getting hungry now … but I digress. Back to the birthday baking.

Apart from the chocolates, I also made lemon squares. I had been itching to try Mary’s recipe, and this was the ideal occasion. Unlike Mary – lucky woman – I don’t have a Meyer lemon tree in my garden, so I had to make do with ordinary supermarket lemons, but apart from that I followed her recipe to the letter. And boy, it was good.

Now, since odd numbers almost always work better, I needed a third sweet for good measure. Something soft and cakey would go well with the other two I thought. Madeleines were my first choice, but those are really only good straight out of the oven methinks. If need be, they are still ok a few hours later, but the longer you leave them the more of their yumminess they lose. So no madeleines this time. Browsing through Claudia Fleming’s Last Course, I found a recipe for almond-brown butter cakes, a financier-like cake baked in mini muffin tins, which sounded perfect. Again, I didn’t change anything about the recipe (mainly because S is always chiding me about changing recipes the first time I make them) though I was a bit apprehensive about the ginormous amount of sugar going into the batter. Indeed the finished cakes were sugar-coma-inducingly sweet, so next time I will substantially lower the amount of sugar. Also, American mini muffin tins must be much bigger than European ones, because I ended up with almost double the amount of cakes stated in the recipe. The finished cakes looked a bit plain I thought, so I brushed them with rose syrup.

And there I had it. A home-made birthday present for my friend, which she loved and enjoyed. Although I bet she secretly would have preferred if it had been a Tiffany’s box – but then what girl wouldn’t? Of course I made way too much of everything for the one present and the leftovers stretched far. They accompanied me to a picnic with friends (their only comment was ‘mmmm’), S took some to work (the comment there was ‘please ask your girlfriend to give me the recipe’) and finally I took some into work as well, where they disappeared faster than the speed of light. The only thing the sweets haven’t got yet, is a virtual recipient. So what better than to take the little blue box to Meeta’s monthly mingle, where she can virtually enjoy them for her big birthday bang. Although maybe she would prefer a Tiffany’s box as well…

chocolate truffles
my own recipe

250g dark chocolate and Green & Black’s espresso chocolate
150ml whipping cream
5 cardamom pods, black seeds only (crushed)
unsweetened cocoa powder or cocoa nibs, for finishing

Chop/grind chocolate into tiny pieces or powder. Bring cream with cardamom to a boil. Take off heat as soon as it starts boiling, cover with cling film and let flavours infuse for about 10 minutes. Add chocolate to cream and mix until the chocolate has dissolved completely. Put in fridge overnight or until firm. With a teaspoon (or melon baller) shape into truffles and dunk into cocoa powder or cocoa nibs.

I made macarons!!!

Exclamation marks (all three of them) absolutely essential. Really. After a first, completely botched attempt to make macarons, which resulted in unremovable stains on my brand-new silpat and a few rock hard blackened heaps of something undescribeable, I shelved the idea of making macarons indefinitely. Or at least until we get around to renovating our kitchen and installing a new stove. But it just so happened I had two leftover egg whites in the fridge and in a moment of madness I thought, what the heck, let’s give it another go.

Michel Roux Jr provided me with his faultless recipe – not personally, sadly, but his Le Gavroche Cookbook did – for chocolate macarons. I sieved the icing sugar, cocoa powder and ground almonds twice, just to make sure, before adding it to the whipped egg whites. Getting the macaron mixture into a plastic bag (with a corner cut off) was a whole undertaking in itself; S had to come and help me and we could have done with a third set of hands, but between us we managed in the end. I lowered the recommended oven temperature substantially and halved the cooking time – not because I don’t trust Monsieur Roux’s instructions, oh no, but because I’m beginning to get the hang of dealing with my oven – and [insert drumroll here] they came out ok. Not great, or award-winning, most of them not even round, and the ones that were in the back of the oven started to go a bit dark already, but ok nonetheless.

Now, I have to confess I’m not a big macaron fan (I may have to go in hiding now – who knows what Robyn will do to me when she tracks me down). The ones I have had so far were invariable cloyingly sweet, with no other taste except for their sweetness. One tiny bite and I can feel a sugar coma coming on. But then I’ve never had a Ladurée or Pierre Hermé macaron, so who knows what I’ve been missing out on all my life. My chocolate macarons were still a bit sweeter than I would have liked, but not too much, and I could still taste the cocoa in them. I sandwiched a few with crème de marrons, which I’m not a big fan of, but it had exactly the right consistency and thus made for a nice photograph (yes, I am that shallow sometimes). For all the other ones I used pure, unsweetened, extremely hazelnutty, hazelnut paste, which was a bit runny, even after a good half hour in the fridge, but it balanced out the sweetness of the macaron wonderfully. The perfect combination for me. Now that I know it can be done (sort of), I will definitely try making macarons again. And while I'm at it, bring on soufflé!

a taste of yellow

With lots of DIY planned for the long bank-holiday weekend, I didn’t have any ambitious baking plans, though I did plan to whip up something for A Taste of Yellow. Barbara of Winos and Foodies is the instigating force behind this food event, which has been approved by the Lance Armstrong Foundation as an official LiveStrong event to raise cancer awareness (LiveStrong Day 2007 will take place on 16 May). Barbara writes: “there isn’t a person in the world who hasn’t been touched by cancer in some way” and that is sadly true of course.

About six weeks ago, M, a dear friend of mine, died of cancer. She was only 34. We first met at uni at our postgraduate degree in Asian art history – a wonderful year, with lots of dinner parties and in which strong worldwide friendships were forged. After graduating, M decided to stay in London and went on to do a PhD while I got myself a job. Both of us being busy people, we saw each other only occasionally, but we kept our fooding tradition going. When she started having stomach problems – and with the NHS living up to its reputation – she decided to go back home to Taiwan for a proper check-up. By the time her cancer was diagnosed, it had already spread. Unfortunately she gave up without a fight, refusing all conventional treatment (because it made her so sick and miserable), trying some herbal remedies instead and refusing to see any of her friends. I, along with our other common friends, felt frustrated and helpless, reading about her suffering in the occasional email she managed to write, but unable to do something. All we could do was send her encouraging emails, urging her not to give up. She wouldn’t have made 80, and probably not even 50, but I can’t help thinking she could have had a good few years left. However, seeing as there is nothing I could have done, I decided to make do with A Taste of Yellow.

With some vague ideas floating around in my head, I didn’t think it would be that difficult to create some sort of yellow food. Right? Hmmm, let’s see. Bread pudding with leftover raisin and cinnamon bread – bread seemed to have moulded overnight. Something with mango – nope, only one sorry-looking rock-hard mango in my fruit bowl. Banana cake – those overripe bananas I had frozen turned out all mushy, looking and smelling rather disgusting. Freezing bananas obviously doesn’t work.

Luckily I did have another bunch of rather ripe bananas and some nectarines. Since I spent most of the weekend sanding skirting boards (and cursing the man who plastered the walls, such a shoddy job, but that’s England for you) I went with an easy, tried and tested, good old Delia recipe for banana walnut loaf, which is published on her website. Having sliced the finished cake in little squares, I tried icing the squares, but my icing technique (I used icing sugar and water mixed into a paste) obviously needs a lot of work still. To jazz the whole lot up a little, I found inspiration in D&C Duby's Wild Sweets in the shape of nectarine carpaccio. I don’t have a mandoline, so I just tried slicing the nectarine as thinly as possible. The slices were then ‘marinaded’ for a few hours in simple syrup (equal measures of water and sugar, boiled and stored in a closed container) with added vanilla bean paste, and draped on top of the cake square. Et voilà, a yellow(ish) cake thingy. Which I'm sure M would have enjoyed.

weekend experimenting

Being a big fan of Keiko’s beautiful blog Nordljus, I got intrigued about all those delectable-looking Hidemi Sugino cakes and tartlets that keep on popping up on her blog. Keiko links these entries to the Japanese Amazon store and Sugino’s cookbook Le Gôut Authentique Retrouvé. Encouraged by the French title, and since amazon.co.jp is, well, in Japanese, and my Japanese doesn’t stretch much further than some touristy phrases, I enlisted the help of my Japanese friend M in Fukuoka and asked her to check for me whether this book was written in French. If so, Mr Sugino and I were in business. No such luck though, the book was written in Japanese only. However, M informed me that he did have a second cookbook, called The Dessert Book, written in Japanese and English. Not only that, she also very kindly sent me a copy of this book. Thank you M-tyan, arigatoo gozaimashita! The recipes in this book are fairly simple, basic and easy to make, but elegant. The one tha