Raisin Cake for Charity

On Sunday I spent the morning enjoying the unseasonably warm mid-autumn sun by taking a route on my walk that encompassed landmarks that in some ways marked time since certain events which they were associated with took place in my life. For a change I had no dog as my dog was holed up at the home of my parents recovering from being spayed. I have to say I felt strange without a dog so I instead concentrated on taking some photos on my new phone of the places that I passed that have meant things to me over the last fifteen years or so.

One picture was of the sun creeping through a clearing in the local wood, a clearing where I remember standing in December fifteen years previously with my previous dog and thinking hard about where I was going to study at university the following year. Another photo I took was of my old local pub that's now closed and bordered up, a pub that I first went into almost fifteen years ago to the day and one where I have spent some of the best nights of my life in with lots of wonderful people.

When I got back home my thoughts turned to the present and also to the upcoming Children in Need charity bake off that my employer was organising for the following week. I had promised colleagues I would make something in support of this cause and so I settled on an old recipe for raisin cake.

There are two ways to make cake mix. The first involves stirring together your margarine and sugar as the first thing you do in your preparaton while the second, which is sometimes called the "rubbed in" method has you putting the flour and margarine in the same bowl and manipulating them together with your hands until the flour and margarine has become like golden breadcrumbs.

It was this second method I used for this recipe by taking 225 grams of self-raising flour and rubbing them together with 110 grams of margarine until I had my golden breadcrumbs in the bowl.

Providing the soundtrack was Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come's 1973 record "Journey". Brown is best known for his 1968 number one "Fire" and little else. However he has over the years produced a number of varied and innovative records that are in some cases vastly superior to those of his more popular peers. Journey is no exception with its blend of strong and passionate singing from Brown, powerful church organs that give the music an ethereal glow and engaging space rock lyrics. The album also has the distinction of being one of the first to use a drum machine which only adds to its unique and innovative character.

I now added 110 grams of sugar and 110 grams of raisins to the mixture and stirred them into the breadcrumbs. Also at this time I added two teaspoons worth of ginger to make the mixture have a real autumnal taste.

After this I added three wooden spoonfuls of milk and an egg before stirring them into all the other ingredients until I had a bowl filled with a paste that smelled of ginger and contained plenty of raisins. I poured it into a greased cake tin and used a butter knife to spread it out evenly in the tin. I cooked the mixture on gas mark 4, alternatively if you have an electric oven, 180 degrees or 170 degrees for a fan oven.

After an hour I removed the cake from the oven and as I have no skewers in my new house I instead used the point of a bottle opener to check if the cake was done by pushing it into the cake. I saw that just a small amount of sponge came off the bottle opener when I withdrew it from the cake so I knew it was ready.

I turned the cake out onto a tray and once it had cooled I wrapped it in foil and put it in the freezer until the following Tuesday night when I defrosted it in time for taking work on the Wednesday.

The taste was excelent as the ginger gave the cake a real kick tastewise. In fact my employer's cashier, who has a notorious sweet tooth, declared it to be the best of the cakes put on offer by his colleagues for the Children in Need which in itself was a succcess raising a lot of money for a worthy cause.

Freshly out of the oven and ready to put into the deep freeze for the following week.

Love and the Italian Winter

The second weekend in October was one where it was time to wind down after a hectic four weeks that included a birthday drink for a friend, a trip to Southport for a black tie event and several random encounters.

After wandering with the dog in the Autumn sun I decided to have a go at a new recipe which, with one eye on the clocks changing soon, had many ingredients contained in it that are associated with wintertime.

I listened to Tangerine Dream's groundbreaking offering Cyclone while preparing the vegetables for what was to become an Italian Winter Vegetable Risotto. Cyclone is groundbreaking, at least for Tangerine Dream, as it was their first album to feature vocals and is all the better and more interesting for this development.

The ingredients for the risotto were as follows:

4 diced and peeled carrotts.
1 diced and peeled white potato.
1 diced and peeled red onion.
2 garlic cloves finely sliced.
half a diced red pepper.
8 ounces of risotto rice.
8 ounces of diced baby corn.
Half a pint of red wine.
Half a pint of chicken stock.
Chorizo slices.

I took the vegetables save the baby corn pieces and fried them lightly in my wok while stirring them constantly for about fifteen minutes until they began to brown slightly. I then added the risotto rice and the baby corn and stirred them constantly too for about ten minutes until the rice began to become translucent.

The next step was to add into the wok half a pint of red wine and simmer it while once again stirring the contents of the wok continuously for about twenty minutes. After the wine had been absorbed by the food I then added half a pint of chicken stock and stirred and simmered this into the food for another twenty minutes until I had a rich mixture that wasn't overly runny.

I served the risotto after adding some slices of fresh chorizo to it right at the end of cooking. I even, as can be seen from the picture below, put one on top of a serving of risotto to decorate it.

I don't usually use winter vegetables in risotto as I find them a little bland and I usually prefer summery risottos like lemon and rocket for example. However this risotto was an exception to the rule as the wine and stock and made it rich and the chorizo and pepper gave a much needed edge to the slight stodge of the carrott and potatoes. Definitely a meal to give one some energy on a winter evening.