Simnel Sunday

On Easter Sunday part two of Easter Baking Project commenced with the preparation of that Easter classic the Simnel Cake. As always I did the two most important things first; one choose the appropriate music to cook to and two grease my cake tin with margarine and a bit of flour. This time round I stacked up Black Sabbath's second, third, fourth and fifth albums to listen to on the CD player and greased a 20.5cm round cake tin with margarine and then sprinkled the inside with flour.

I put six ounces of brown sugar and six ounces of margarine into a bowl and then creamed them thoroughly until they were fluffy. I then gradually added three eggs and four and a half ounces of self-raising flour into the mix while stirring them hard with a wooden spoon until my right arm felt like it had more muscles in it than before.

I next dropped in a teaspoon of nutmeg, two tablespoons of golden syrup and five tablespoons of semi-skimmed milk into the bowl and mixed them in until they vanished into the rest of the ingredients. I next got two hundred grams of mixed peel, five hundred grams of sultanas and a further four and a half ounces of flour and dropped them into the bowl. I then stirred them into the rest of the mixture and did not let up until all the flour had disappeared and there was no loose fruit showing. I finished things off by squirting in two teaspoons worth of almond essence.

I then took some ready-made marzipan and rolled out a slice big enough to cover the bottom of my cake tin. I poured half the fruit mixture into the tin and then put the marzipan on top of it. Following this I buried the marzipan with the rest of the mixture atop of it. I got the oven ready meanwhile by pre-heating it to 170 degrees (180 for non-fanned ovens) and cooked the cake mix on this temperature for an hour. I then turned the oven down to 130 degrees (140 for non- fanned ovens) and cooked the cake for another hour until it started to burn a little at the edges. After this I took it out of the oven, left it on the side to cool and had an early night.

The next morning once the cake had cooled I spread plum jam over the top of it and covered the top with marzipan and the jam acted as glue to keep the marzipan topping in place. I used the spare marzipan to create a pattern on the top as you can see in the pictures.

The Simnel cake is, perhaps appropriately, the Ben Hur of cakes in that it is an epic that takes a while to make and take in. However the taste is worth it with the two types of marzipan; one on top of the cake and one melted inside of this making it one of the best cakes there is.

Fancy yourself?

On Easter Saturday I got into the mood for making some sweets that are popular at this time of year. Therefore I decided to make some fancies with a Simnel Cake to follow on Easter Sunday. I selected U2's 1987 blockbuster the Joshua Tree as the soundtrack for the afternoon's baking. U2 are a band that somehow have become huge despite basing almost every song they have produced on David Bowie's 1977 hit single "Heroes". Still 150 million people who go back time after time to buy their records can't be wrong can they?

Having selected a suitable album to listen to I got hold of a 20cm x 20cm baking tray that was 5cm deep and greased it with margarine and then a bit of flour. I then measured out four ounces of caster sugar and four ounces of margarine and mixed them together in a bowl with a wooden spoon until the sugar had made the butter fluffy like cotton wool.

I then cracked two eggs in a bowl and whisked them together. I next added half the egg mixture to the butter and sugar and stirred them together. In order to stop the ingredients becoming overly sloppy I added two ounces of self-raising flour into the mix. I then added the rest of the egg mixture and a further two ounces of self-raising flour to the bowl and exercised the muscles in my right arm to combine the ingredients thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

Once the mixture was thickened I poured it into the baking tray and cooked it for 25 minutes on 170 degrees (180 for non-fan ovens). I was able to check the sponge I had created was cooked properly as I pressed my finger into it and it instantly sprung back into position like a mattress when someone gets up suddenly from it. Cooking sponge is not an exact science and sometimes you made to cook this recipe for 30 minutes depending on your oven in order to be sure the sponge is not runny in the middle and under- cooked.

After the sponge had cooled I put four ounces of icing sugar into a bowl and mixed them with three tablespoons of hot water. Once the ingredients were mixed I cut the sponge into nine equal pieces and covered the first three with the icing sugar which was at this point white. I stuck two pieces of dolly mixture on top of the icing to decorate. I then added a few drops of red food colouring to icing sugar remaining in the bowl and then covered the remaining pieces of sponge it and some more dolly mixture.

The fancies proved to be a big hit that evening at my friend's house and went well with a cup of tea and also a can or two of Stella Artois according to one of school friends who sampled some of them with his lager of choice.

Egg and Bacon Pie by popular demand

A friend asked me recently why I didn't do much cooking with meat. I didn't really have a good answer as to why not so this post is really dedicated my friend and shows I do sometimes use meat in my recipes.

It was Thursday night, it had a been the longest four day week I had experienced for a long time and had been made more difficult by the unexpected and disruptive snow on the Wednesday. I came home from work, slapped Peter Gabriel's excellent 2003 best of compilation "Hit" onto the CD player and with the sounds of stabbing synthesizers from his 1982 hit "Shock the Monkey" ringing in my ears I set about making an egg and bacon pie.

I wanted to make something that was quick and easy as I had received an exciting offer of a night on the town from the friend who had urged me to use a bit more meat in my cooking.

I first thoroughly greased a 20cm wide and 3cm deep glass pie dish with margarine and dusted the dish with plain flour to help stop the pie sticking to it when cooked. I next took eight ounces of plain flour and four ounces of margarine and rubbed them in until the mixture represented golden breadcrumbs. I then poured two tablespoons of milk into the bowl and mixed the ingredients together until the mixture joined together to form a pastry. I next kneaded it in the bowl to be sure the mixture was strong enough to hold together.

I meanwhile took three eggs and whisked them together in a bowl before taking ten rashers of smoked back bacon and cutting all the fat of them on a chopping board. I took care to cut the meat into squares of 2cm x 2cm and then mixed them in the bowl with the eggs and some black pepper.

I then turned my attention to the pastry and rolled it out flat on the work surface while making sure to put a bit of flour on the work surface and the rolling pin to make sure the pastry did not stick. I lined the bottom of the pastry dish with half the pastry and then poured the egg and bacon into the dish. I then put the rest of the pastry on top and pressed the edges down so as to seal the egg and bacon inside the pie.

It's always a mistake if you leave no holes in a pie and then cook it as the air needs to be let out during the cooking process. With this in mind I cut three 2cm slits in the middle of the pie and then brushed it with some skimmed milk.

I cooked the pie in the oven at 180 degrees (190 if you have a non-fanned oven) for thirty-five minutes. If you have a less powerful oven it's worth cooking it for forty minutes.

The pie took me about an hour in total to prepare and cook from scratch and was delicious when eaten with some brown sauce. It also meant I was ready for my night out in good time and the tasty pie put me in the right mood to enjoy the company of great people old and new.
 

Chocolate Cake Comfort Food

At the end of February it was dad's birthday and it meant that he was another year closer to the big six-zero. It was also the time when I found out that my annual membership subscription at the Golf Club was due and that it was too late in the year to resign without paying the full fee. As a result of these two events it seemed only right to cook a bit of comfort food so I set about making a good old fashioned chocolate sponge cake.

I first put eight ounces of margarine and eight ounces of caster sugar into the mixing bowl and then creamed them together with a wooden spoon until the mixture was fluffy and there were no loose grains of sugar in the bowl.

I then took two eggs and cracked them in another bowl and whisked them together thoroughly. The eggs were then poured gradually into the bowl with the butter and sugar and mixed together. At this point the mixture looked very soft and sloppy so I took six ounces of self-raising flour plus two ounces of very dark cocoa powder and added these into the bowl a little at a time until the mixture was a lot thicker. Once there was no trace of the flour and it was totally combined into the mixture  the job was done.

I meanwhile greased with margarine a 15cm wide and 3.5cm deep cake tin. I took care to add flour to the bottom of the tin to help ease the cake mixture off it after it was cooked. I then poured the mixture into the cake tin and baked it in the oven for 45 minutes on 170 degrees (180 if you don't have a fan oven).

After the mixture had cooled I turned it out onto a wire tray, took a large bread knife and sliced through the middle so as to cut the top of the cake off. I then rested cut off top on the bottom of the cake and realised it was time to make the filling. I sieved four ounces of icing sugar into a bowl and then creamed them together with an ounce of cocoa powder. I then added a tablespoon of hot water to the mixture and stirred it in until I had butter cream that was as thick as a very dense white sauce. I then spread this over the bottom half of the cake and placed the other half on top of it to form a sandwich.

In order to finish the cake off I put seventy grams of dark chocolate into a bowl that I heated over a pan of boiling water. Once the chocolate had melted I took the bowl off the hob and put an ounce of margarine into it. I then spread it over the top of the cake and left it to set.

The long process was worth it, as the cake provided the perfect comfort food bearing in mind the negative circumstances surrounding its initial creation. The fact I used dark cocoa and dark chocolate meant that it was sweet and tasty without being too sickly, which it would have been had I used milk chocolate to make it.

Blending your greens

On a Sunday afternoon last month with the late winter sun shining through into the kitchen and the sound of Cat Stevens 1970 comeback album Tea for the Tillerman with its clean, finger-picked  acoustic guitar notes seeping out of the stereo I set about making soup for tea. I chose this time round to make a spinach soup.

I first took two large red potatoes, peeled them and then cut them into cubes. I next washed the dirt out of two leeks, topped and tailed them, removed their outer layers and then sliced them length ways. The pieces of leek were then cut into five parts each so as they could cook quicker and be blended without damaging the blender. The pieces of leek and potato were then placed into my trusty Le Creuset dish and fried on the hob in olive oil for ten minutes on a medium heat.

While the potato and leek were slowly frying I washed one pound of spinach and boiled up the kettle to make a pint and a half of vegetable stock using hot water and two vegetable stock cubes. After the leek and potato had fried for ten minutes I added the stock and spinach to them together with a tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon, a teaspoon of nutmeg and a teaspoon of black pepper. I next brought the mixture to the boil and left it to simmer for about thirty-five minutes to ensure the ingredients were cooked fully and the stock and seasoning had soaked into the vegetables. You will see if you try this recipe that although there is a lot of spinach it shrinks quickly when cooked and will easily fit into the dish.

To finish off I left the mixture to cool for five minutes and then blended it and reheated it in a large pan. The soup itself is a khaki green colour when blended that isn't dissimilar to the spinach Popeye used to eat in the cartoons. To taste it is slightly bitter as a result of the lemon, nutmeg and pepper but the potato, leek and spinach give it a substance that rewards repeated helpings.

Canned Gooseberry Tart

During the third weekend in February I decided to make a substantial pudding to keep my energy levels up following a late finish at work the day before and the prospect of a late night catching up with a friend I had not seen for nearly two months.

I decided to adapt a recipe for Gooseberry Tart that I had seen. I took eight ounces of plain flour and then put them in a bowl with four ounces of margarine that I had cut into small pieces about an inch long. I then worked the ingredients by rubbing them in until the mixture resembled golden breadcrumbs which were not a dissimilar shade of yellow to the colour of the moon last night and on Thursday Night. I then added two teaspoons of caster sugar to the mixture and used about three tablespoons of milk to bind the mixture together until it was in a position to roll out. Sometimes you may need a little less than three tablespoons of milk to get the ingredients to come together but you should try and make sure the pastry is quite dry bearing in mind the dampness of the filling. 

The pastry when rolled out should be enough to cover a 25cm wide and 3cm deep pie dish. Always make sure that before you line the dish with pastry you have greased it thoroughly with margarine and put a little flour in it so that the pastry does not stick to it when you come to serve it.

To make the filling you first need to take a 300 gram can of Gooseberrys and purify them in a blender. It is tempting at this point to stick the purified Gooseberrys in a glass and drink them as a very sweet smoothie, instead leave them to one side and put the yolks and whites of four large eggs into a bowl with five ounces of caster sugar and eight fluid ounces of plain Greek Yogurt. You should then mix these ingredients together with a whisk before adding the Gooseberry Puree. Then the mixture should be whisked again until there are no air pockets in it which could burst whilst cooking the tart. When I cooked my tart my forearms were so sore from whisking I felt like I'd just bowled a ten over spell at my cricket team's club pro. The sore arms I have to say are worth it when you take into account the results.

I then poured the mixture into the pie dish and cooked it at 150 degrees (160 if you do not have a fan oven) for 45 minutes. I served it with a side helping of plain Greek Yogurt. The tart has a wide range of flavours; on one hand you have the sweet pastry which is balanced out by using plain Greek Yogurt in the filling. Some recipes for this tart use whipped cream instead of Yogurt, however the inclusion of the Yogurt makes the tart a little more healthy without losing the flavour and it stops the dish being too sweet and sickly for its own good.

Complicated pie yields tasty results

A few Sundays ago instead of having my normal morning dog walk I had a bit of a lie in (a rarity for me these days) as it was raining heavily. When I finally became motivated to get up I decided to cook a pie for Sunday Dinner; my choice was a pie that is not the easiest to make but if prepared correctly makes a top quality meal.

With the Led Zeppelinesqe heavy rock riffs of Rush's second album Fly by Night  playing through the stereo in the kitchen I first laid my hands on two heads of Fennel, a medium-sized cauliflower and a small red onion. I washed the vegetables thoroughly and then cut them up into relatively small pieces. I next put them into a steamer and left them to steam until soft for about twenty minutes.

In the meantime I prepared my pastry. I find that wholemeal pastry is the best type to use for this recipe to stop it becoming too bland for its own good. I measured out eight ounces of wholemeal flour, not wholemeal bread flour I might add, if you use wholemeal bread flour it makes it difficult to bind the ingredients together to make good pastry. I poured the flour into a mixing bowl and added four ounces of margarine to the flour. I then rubbed the ingredients together until they resembled breadcrumbs. I next poured into the bowl about two tablespoons of unsweetened soya milk and mixed it with the other ingredients. I then rubbed the ingredients together until they formed a ball of pastry. Sometimes when making this type of pastry you may need a little more soya milk than I have stated but if your pastry becomes too sticky as a result be prepared to add more flour to dry it up so you can roll it out properly.

I then put the pastry to one side for a time while I tested the steamed vegetables with a fork to ensure they were soft and therefore ready. I then turned off the heat and left them to stand. I next made a white sauce by first melting in a pan on a low light an ounce of margarine and then combining it with a heaped tablespoon of plain flour and a pinch of mustard and white pepper. I then gradually added some skimmed milk while keeping the pan on the heated hob. I continued to add in a bit of milk at a time and mix the ingredients together until I was left with a white sauce that was thicker than cheese spread. It is key for this recipe that the white sauce is as thick as possible. Once the sauce is thickened I left it on a very low heat on the hob.

The next part of the preparation was thankfully a little easier as I all I needed to do was add a quarter of a pint of boiling water to a stock cube in a measuring jug to prepare the vegetable stock. A quarter of a pint of stock is about right for this recipe as any more than this will make the pie soggier than a wet weekend in Reigate.

I now rolled out my wholemeal pastry as flat and as thinly as possible without it becoming wafer thin. I used two thirds of it to line the bottom of a pie dish about two centimetres deep and about 20-25cm across. I next piled the vegetables into the dish (in the way shown in the first picture) and poured in the vegetable stock. In order to finish off the filling I placed the white sauce on top of the vegetables and spread it over them like thick butter with my wooden spoon. I then covered the pie with the remaining pastry and pressed down the edges at the side of the pie so as to seal it totally. In order to let the heat out when cooking I cut three two centimetre long slits in the top of the pie and brushed the pastry with semi-skimmed milk. In order to make the pie oven ready I greased some foil and put it over the top of the pie so as the whole top was covered.

I was near the finish line with this recipe when I put it in my oven which I had pre-heated to 190 degrees (200 degrees if it wasn't a fanned oven). I cooked the pie with the foil on it for 30 minutes, took it out of the oven, removed the foil and then cooked it for a further ten minutes.

The complicated procedure was worth the wait as you can see from the pictures that the mix of vegetables, white sauce and stock together with the wholemeal pastry make for a pie which has all the substance of a meat pie. I chose to serve mine with boiled peas (steamed broccoli will do if you dislike peas) and plenty of brown sauce which enhances the taste even more.