wedding crafts

Dan and I married 10 days ago. So the million dollar question is, how did I get on with the crafts?

Cake:
Very tasty. The unintentioned use of stem ginger to replace some of the dried fruit was a rather lovely touch. Turns out the cakes really didn't need to be taller - there was plenty to go round with some to spare.
Despite the process of covering the 2 tiers with marzipan and icing (on the warmest day of the year) being a sticky and bad-language-inducing process I managed it. The decorations by my Mum's friend were inspired - fun, not too serious. An excellent reflection of the spirit of our wedding.

Bouquet:
A big hit! Everyone loved its quirkyness. The kids fought over holding it. It did take a bit of a battering, but survived relatively intact. And best of all it'll last way longer than real flowers.

Bridesmaids's dresses
Finished in time. Both girls seemed comfortable in their pretty dresses. They looked very lovely in the ceremony, but were comfy enough to run around in the park after.

My dress

Completed with a few days to spare. I learnt lots from the process. A few flaws in the finished dress, but nothing too crucial. I was very relieved not to have messed up my beautiful fabrics.

that's me in the middle





Bunting

I cheated! I stapled a bunch of old playing cards to tape and used that to string up as bunting. I did the same with some butterfly shapes cut out of multi coloured felt. Given that the rain started that night and destroyed all outside decorations I was glad I hadn't expended a lot of time and effort on them!

So there you are: wedding crafts complete!

Although we didn't ask for any gifts we had some wonderful handcrafted ones: paintings, wood turning, knitted items, cupcakes. We had a brilliant couple of days.

Birthday Cake

I am a bad girlfriend. It is Dan's birthday today. I forgot about it entirely until saturday, and then it was because my Mum mentioned it that I remembered. Not that Dan minds in the slightest, but I feel guilty.

Cue urgent ordering of a present (which hasn't arrived yet - oops), and slightly frantic wednesday evening efforts on the cake-baking front.

So here's Dan's birthday cake:

Its called a Passion Cake. Not sure why, but its essentially a banana and carrot cake with walnuts (I know that sounds a bit wrong but you can't taste the carrots so its just a moist banana loaf). I sandwiched it together with cream-cheese icing and sprinkled a few walnuts on the top. The walnuts looked lovely - they were foraged late last year in the woods near where we live and have been drying out in a bowl in our living room. It was good to find a suitable occasion to use them.

I won't get to taste-test this one as Dan has taken it to share out at work, but hopefully I'll get feedback. With any luck I managed to cut off all the singed bit on the top caused by the wierd hot-spot in our oven!

UPDATE: Dan said he was the most popular man in the office yesterday, all the cake went in about 2 minutes, and there was much disappointment from those that were too slow to get a piece. 

Finally some cooking!

I've failed dismally in the cooking stakes over the last few weeks. Marathon training has completely taken over my life, and has not left much time for browsing cook books to come up with interesting dishes.

However, this weekend being a 4-day weekend I actually found time to both run and cook something good! I had a little bit of a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall moment, and had a go at making (a very small quantity of) homemade yoghurt, and also a Jamaican Ginger cake from the River Cottage Everyday cookbook.

Hugh's programme was on the TV last night, which is what finally prompted me to have a go at the yoghurt. Dan had mentioned the process a few months back but we hadn't tried it out up until today. After my breakfast this morning I had a scoop of yoghurt left in the tub, so it seemed an opportune time to have a go. My jar of yoghurt-to-be is currently sitting on the hearth swaddled in tea towels to keep it warm, where it will stay until 9pm tonight: Taste test in the morning! If it works I'll buy a thermos flask to keep it warm next time - its not very practical to light the fire every time you want a bit of yoghurt!

And so to the baking. I felt I was overdue a baking session, and my old neighbour does like a slice or two of cake when I'm making it, so today I flicked through my books until I found a recipe where I already had all the ingredients. Jamaican ginger cake was the choice, although I did swap the rum for brandy because that's what we had (and surely once cooked in a ginger cake it would be pretty tricky to tell the difference anyway). Despite the industrial quantities of golden syrup, sugar and black treacle the cake didn't turn out ridiculously rich and sweet. The ginger and allspice gave it a little kick. Dan wants to try in with creme fraiche, I think a roast banana would be a yummy addition, either way its a good cake.

Baking

Today we had a bake sale at work. Its Children in Need, and although I do tend to feel a bit 'bah humbug' about charity events which feel compulsory, I like my work colleagues so I wanted to be helpful and muck in.

I made a batch of Caraway Shortbread biscuits from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's River Cottage Every Day book. I really liked them - they were fragrant from the seeds, crips and buttery. Sweet enough to be a treat, but not so much they're sickly. Yummy.

Sadly (for charitable fundraising) it would appear that most people don't want to risk something new, so I had to take some home again at the end of the day.

This wasn't so sad for me and Dan though - biscuits for the weekend. Marvellous!


PS Kris - I haven't forgotten your baked goods, but these wouldn't survive a trip to New York.

Bakewell

Dan's a Yorkshire boy, and as such one of his favourite puddings is Bakewell Tart. Yet despite it being on the list for quite some time I had never made one.

This weekend I finally put that right. The boy was heading off for a week away for work, so a proper send-off dinner seemed appropriate. And you can't have a proper dinner without a proper pudding.



I took my Bakewell Tart reipe from Tamasin Day-Lewis's Cookery Bible, and it was delicious still warm from the oven, and also lovely cold with a cup of tea when visitors dropped round the next morning.



Here's the recipe:

Bakewell Tart - enough for 6-8 slices

For the filling:
110g Rasberry Jam (preferably homemade)
70g butter
70g ground almonds
70g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon almond essence
10g flaked almonds

For the pastry:
100g plain flour
50g butter
pinch salt

First make your pastry. Runb the cold butter into the flour and salt until it resembles the consistency of breadcrumbs. Mix to a stiff dough with a spoonful of cold water. Wrap in cligfilm and allow it to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Grease a pie tin (approx 16-18cm diameter), roll out the pastry on a floured board and lay it in the tin, letting it slightly overhang the edges.
Return the tin to the fridge for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200C. Spread a generous layer of rasberry jam over the pastry base. In a bowl mix together the ground almonds, sugar, vanilla essence and almond essence. Beat in the eggs, mixing well. Then melt the butter over a low heat until it smells slightly nutty and add it to the cakey mixture. Mix well before spooning it into the pastry case on top of the jam.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes then sprinkle the flakes almonds on top and return it to the oven for a further 5 minutes - until the almonds are toasted and the cakey mixture is lightly browned and just set.

Allow to cool for 20 minutes, and serve warm with cream or icecream.

Sugar and Spice and all things nice

Autumn is a brilliant season in so many ways. Sure, its sad to see the end to the summer, but isn't that bitter pill easier to swallow with the abundance of tasty morsels in the hedgerows and woodlands?

This week I received a gift of hazelnuts from our neighbour and picked up a load of sweet chestnuts in the woods round my parents's place.



So, what to do with them all?



Why not combine my two favourite things - cooking and crafts? I found a yummy-sounding recipe in my Alice in Wonderland craft book. It was described as Sugar and Spice Comfits; a combination of nuts, seeds, spices, and dried fruit. I used roasted sweet chestnuts and hazelnuts, pecans, pistachios, blanched almonds, toasted caraway, fennel, and coriander seeds, some crystallised ginger, dried cranberries, sultanas, sunflower seeds, pinenuts and sesame seeds. Go mad - throw in whatever you have to hand (you'll want about 100g nuts, 50g dried fruit, 1 tablespoon spice seeds, 25g other seeds)!



Once I'd chosen my ingredients I made a small amount of sugar syrup by heating 50g caster sugar in a heavy pan over a gentle heat until it melted and turned into a syrup. I then removed the pan from the heat, mixed in the fruit and nuts, then spread it out on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and left it to cool.



These are meant to be brilliant on icecream, or you you can just snack on them as they are (which is what I've been doing). Yummy.



And for my next trick I collected up a load of sloes from the hedgerow, bought a bottle of gin and mixed up some sloe gin (700 ml gin, 450g sloes, 150g sugar, 1/4 teaspoon almond essence).



It won't be ready to drink until the end of January so I'll have to report back then. Between now and deepest-darkest winter I'll be shaking the kilner jar regularly, at least until the sugar dissolves. It'll be ready with perfect timing to see us through the harshness of coming back from a warm holiday to the cold British winter!

Two ways with beetroot

Leafing through my Riverford Farm cookbook the other day it struck me that I don't think I've ever eaten a beetroot. The strong smell and psychadelic colour of the pickled variety have always put me off, and I'd never really considered it as a stand-alone vegetable. Still, I'm all for trying to challenge my taste buds these days, so I resolved to cook beetroot next time I found it for sale. Funny how as soon as I decided that, I spotted it in the farmshop.

The recipe I chose was a beetroot gratin, from the Riverford cookbook. I wasn't sure I was ready for cooking the beetroot and eating it whole and unadulterated, so a slight dilution with cream, garlic and summer savoury from the garden seemed a good beginners beetroot choice. I did also cheat a little by using 350g beetroot and 200g potato rather than all beetroot.

I have to say, I was worried. The thought of dinner potentially being disgusting when you are really hungry is not funny. I should have trusted in Riverford though. Afterall, they haven't let me down before.

Despite the dish coming out of the oven looking distinctly alarming:


And staining both the smoked haddock and cabbage which I served with it a vibrant shade of pink:


It was actually a really lovely dish. Subtle flavoured, creamy, and a lighter and less stodgy version of a dauphinoise. If I feel like staining the kitchen and my fingers bright pink again I'll make this for dinner. Very tasty.

As the beetroot was sold by the bunch I was left with a couple of beetroot globes to use up. I keep reading how good beetroot is in cake - like carrots it helps fruit or chocolate cakes stay wonderfully moist. Further on in the Riverford book I discovered a recipe for a carrot/beetroot cake. Dan had requested cake for work as he's leaving for a new job, so I figured I had to live up to my reputation for providing unusual foodstuffs. No standard Victoria sponge for the office then: they were going to get a beetroot and carrot cake. And if they decided it was too wierd to eat then all the more for me!

The batter was a truly alarming bright pink colour, but I'm pleased to say that once it was baked it had only a subtle pink tinge, which was much more appealing!



Apparently some people did turn their noses up at the cake. Wierd how the thought of beetroot in a cake is repulsive to some people, but eating food stuffed full of chemicals is just fine with them! Those that did try the cake did like it, and Dan even had a request for the recipe.

My assessment of the recipe is that it either needs the addition of some spices, like nutmeg or cinnamon, or it needs a cream cheese icing. So, some tweaking required, but a fairly decent cake.

The recipe can be found here.

Blackberry and apple season

Its harvest time of year, and around our village there is plenty of evidence of an abundant year for apples. Lots of houses have big boxes of bramleys and assorted eating apples outside with 'please help yourself' signs. And if they're offering...well, it would be rude to turn them down!

I've noticed blackberries have been less successful this year. I've managed a couple of tubs full, but not the quantities that are normally easily found at this time of year. Still, for this week's recipe apples were the key ingredient, blackberries just the finishing flourish. A classic combination, and one I never get tired of, but this time I used them in a different way (normally the pudding at this time of year is Blackberry and apple crumble). There was finally space in the freezer, so I decided to try making Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's recipe for Bramley yoghurt Ice with Blackberry sauce swirl.

I stewed the apples with sugar, purreed them, added a little honey (things seem less sweet when frozen so a little extra sweetness seemed appropriate - Hugh suggests icing sugar but I prefered the idea of honey) and left them to cool while I went out blackberry picking.



Fresh blackberries acquired I set about making a blackberry sauce by stewing them with a little sugar and cinnamon, then sieving them to leave just a thick blackberry juice.



While this cooled I mixed the apple puree with a little yoghurt and churned it in the icecream maker:



When it had finished I drizzled the blackberry sauce over the top and transfered it to the freezer for a few hours.


(sorry - not focused, but this was the only snap I took!)

Mine actually ended up sitting in the freezer for a few days before we got round to eating some of it, so it needed to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes to soften a little before eating. I loved this. Its one of my favourite flavour combinations anyway, and a healthy, creamy, frozen pudding is a beautiful thing.

Steamed pudding

There are a number of items that have been sitting on my 'to do' list for quite some time. One of these was steamed syrup sponge - a childhood favourite of Dan's. I tried it once last year, but my recipe turned out more like sticky toffee pudding. Nice, but not what I was after.

Given that Dan had spent 2 weekends and every evening last week under my car trying to get it roadworthy I felt that he definitely deserved a treat, so on saturday I made a second attempt at the pudding.



This time is was declared a winner: better than his mum's version! So all credit to Delia Smith, who's recipe I used. It gained me major brownie points and a boyfriend who was no longer in a stinking bad mood.

We were super-indulgent and served the recipe with double cream, although I think that custard is the more traditional choice. I did adapt the recipe slightly and cut down the quantities, so here's the method I ended up with:

Steamed Syrup Sponge
Serves 5-6

20g black treacle
50g golden syrup
115g self-raising flour
2/3 teaspoon baking powder
115g butter (softened)
2 eggs
115g soft light brown sugar

Grease an 800ml capacity pudding basin. Spoon the golden syrup into the bottom of the basin.
Sift the flour and baking powder. Add all the other ingredients and beat well for several minutes.
Spoon the batter into the pudding basin and level the top.
Place a sheet of foil over a sheet of greaseproof paper, make a pleat in the centre, and place this foil-side uppermost on top of the pudding basin. Pull it down the sides and tie round the basin with string. Make a string handle for lifting the basin.
Steam for 1 1/2 hours, checking the water level half way through to ensure it doesn't boil dry.
To serve, loosen the pudding all round using a palette knife, invert it on to a plate. Delia suggests spooning more golden syrup over the top at this stage, but I didn't do that and it was plenty sticky and sweet anough as it was.
Serve warm with cream, custard, creme fraiche, or vanilla icecream.

Do expect to have to go on a diet after eating just a single helping, but it will be completely worth it!

Cake and neighbourlyness

A couple of months ago my mother burdened me with a sourdough cake starter. The starter and instructions for its nuture and ultimate baking had been doing the rounds of her workplace. Most people had dutifully tended their starter for 10 days, divided it into 4, baked one, and distributed the rest. They all took their completed cakes in to taste test the different versions. All sounds very lovely and communal.

But it appears my mum ran out of people to distribute starters to, so when my brother-in-law came to visit he brought with him the gift of 'Hermann the German Sourdough cake'. No explanation, no phonecall to see if I wanted to have a go. Just...there it was.

So, I cursed a little (who wants to wait 10 days for cake?) and then figured I'd have a try at the thing. The tending was easy - just feed it with flour and sugar every few days. It appeared to be realtively indestructable - an extra day here and there did it no harm at all.

But then I got to the point of dividing it up. I know no-one who might want to tend a cake for 10 days. Even if it is super easy. So I began "Operation bake LOTS of cake". I baked all 4. One went to my office, one went to Dan's. The final two were sliced up and half frozen, half eaten.

The beauty of this cake is that you can throw in pretty much any flavourings you fancy, so I emptied the contents of the dried fuit tub, the fruit from the fridge, and also made a carrot cake version. Also, it does freeze well. And it is rather tasty. (I shouldn't be being so grotty about it really - My only complaint is the wait-time.)

Even with lots of cake in the freezer there was far too much cake in our house for 2 people to get through before it went stale, so I took some over the road to our old neighbour. He's a funny chap - I've given him cake when we've had too much once or twice before, and he's always amazingly grateful. I guess its not the kind of thing he would make for himself.

Two days later Bob stopped me on the road and told me he'd never eaten anything like my cake and that he'd pay me to make him another. I felt guilty I'd jettisoned the project and had no more sourdough starter.

Well, I put it out of my mind - afterall I couldn't make him another. I didn't have a starter to do so, and I couldn't 100% remember what I'd put in his (dried apricots and bananas, with some fresh blueberries I think, maybe some vanilla or cinnamon.) But then last weekend Bob came round with a gift of runner beans and tomatoes from his garden, and apples from someone's orchard (probably stolen!). Well it seemed churlish not to respond, so I took some sourdough cake slices out of the freezer and dropped them round.

On tuesday I came home to find more runner beans and a pot of plum jam on the doorstep, along with a note:



After I stopped chuckling I dutifully dropped round more cake from the freezer.

But those were the last slices....so what happens now? I wonder if he can be mollified by a different kind of cake?!

Jelly

I seem to have been cooking with fruit a lot recently.

This time I added wine too.

Red wine and rhubarb jellies:



Very alcoholic tasting, a little bit fruity and a little bit citrusy. Grown up jellies for jelly and icecream. Or rhubarb and custard. Or just on their own...perhaps add just a little drizzle of cream? These turn out with a very strong and rich flavour - a love it or hate it dish I expect. I loved them, but they weren't Dan's thing AT ALL (all the more for me!).

If you have a bottle of red wine, some rhubarb, sugar, ginger, some gelatine (or agar-agar flakes) an orange and a lemon then do give it a try. Its elderflower season now, and a few elderflower heads added to the mix gives a nice floral fragrance to the jelly. You may love it, you may hate it, but its definitely worth a go!

Go on.

Please.

They're easy - I made mine while simulateously chatting to my boyfriend's mother, making her a coffee, and cooking pasta for our dinner.

See? Must be easy.

Rhubarb and Red Wine Jelly

250g rhubarb - chopped into chunks
450ml Red Wine
50g sugar (you could risk a little more if you like your desserts sweet)
2.5cm chunk root ginger - peeled & sliced
3 elderflower heads (optional)
40ml lemon juice
Juice of 1 orange (or about 100ml)
4-5 sheets of gelatine

Put all the ingredients except the gelatine in a pan and bring to a simmer over a low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Allow to simmer for about 15 minutes until the rhubarb is soft.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly then strain the liquid, pressing as much of the fruit as possible through the sieve. Discard any remaining fruity puree.
Cut the gelatine sheets into small pieces and soak in cold water for 10 minutes. Then scoop the softened gelatine out of the water and mix it into the (still warm) red wine liquid. Stir until the gelatine dissolves then pour the liquid into jelly moulds.
Allow to cool to room temperature then refridgerate overnight to set.

Being foolish

This week I meandered out to the Pick Your Own farm again during my lunch break. This time I picked enough strawberries to have some to gobble straight away and a load to make jam. I made strawberry and mint jam using leaves from the chocolate mint in my garden. (I'd never heard of choclate mint, but came across it on a plant stall at a craft show: It has a richer flavour than normal garden mint - much more pudding-y.)

Gooseberries were also ready for picking at the farm.



When I was a child we had a gooseberry bush in the garden. They were my mum's favourite, but I never liked them. It could have been a reaction to getting prickled fingers when picking them I suppose but ever since I have assumed that I don't like gooseberries. Since they were ripe for picking I thought I would challenge myself to try one.

Revelatory moment: they're really nice!

I made Dan eat one when I got home: He was very dubious about the idea as he swore they were the kind of sharp fruit that could only be eaten stewed with lots of sugar. The look on his face when he realised how nice these ones were was priceless.

So, preconceptions squashed...what to do with 350g of gooseberries?

Last week I made a Rhubarb, Strawberry and Orange Flower Water Fool based on the recipe in Silvana Franco's Hi-Lo Cook Book. Dan and I both enjoyed it as a light, refreshing pudding, so I decided to try something similar with my gooseberries. I decided to go for a classic flavour combination of gooseberries and elderflowers, so I stewed 200g of gooseberries in 2 tablespoons of the elderflower cordial I made a couple of weeks ago, and used this to make a Gooseberry Fool.

The following recipe is mainly based on the Silvano Franco Rhubarb Fool recipe, but also takes elements from various other recipes that I found in the Riverford Cook Book, on BBC Good Food, and in Tamasin Day Lewis's Kitchen Bible.


Gooseberry and Elderflower Fool (for 2)

200g gooseberries
2 tablespoons elderflower cordial

60g double cream
60g thick yoghurt

Icing sugar to taste

Top and tail the gooseberries and place them in a pan with the elderflower cordial. Heat over a low-medium heat until the gooseberries soften (probably about 10-15 minutes in total). Set aside to cool.
Mix together the double cream and yoghurt with a whisk. Spoon alternate layers of yogurt-cream mixture and stewed gooseberries into a tall glass (sprinkle the gooseberry layers with a little icing sugar if you prefer your desserts on the sweet-side). Put in the fridge to chill over night.



Such an easy dessert, and not that bad for you really. It feels creamy and indulgent enough to be a treat whilst not being a heart-attack in a glass! It could handle a little more elderflower flavour if you like the taste of elderflowers, as the gooseberries are very dominant in the proportions above.

PS Its entirely irrelevant, but gooseberries really remind me of Chinese lanterns. I love that.

Seriously chocolatey cookies

My niece came to stay for the weekend and since the weather was shocking, what else were we going to do other than hit the kitchen to bake up a choclatey storm?

It took us a while to narrow our recipe choices down to chocolate cookies. We actually used a recipe for chocolate and sour cherry cookies, but we rejected the sour cherry element for two reasons: Natasha thought they sounded gross, and I didn't have any anyway!

Apparently the mixture tasted gorgeous even before baking - its a wonder that we had any left to bake!



We made 11 enormous cookies and had one each for pudding, accompanied by strawberry icecream.



Here's the cherry-less version of the recipe, but I do think the cherries would be good in them, just perhaps not for teenagers who don't like their chocolate diluted by fruit!

Chocolate Cookies

235g dark chocolate
150g plain flour
40g drinking chocolate
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
100g butter
240g soft brown sugar
2 eggs

Sieve the bicarbonate of soda, flour, salt and drinking chocolate.
Beat the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well as you add each one. Fold in the flour mixture in 3 stages, beating well after each addition.
Melt the chocolate and mix it into the cookie mixture.
Line baking trays with non stick baking parchment. Form balls of mixture (about a tablespon per cookie) and place them on the baking sheet. Put in the fridge to firm up for 1/2 hour.
Heat the oven to 165C.
Bake the cookies for 15-20 mins until crackled on top. Cool on the tray for 5 mins then on a wire rack until cold.



Yummmmmmmmmm. (But go easy on them - they're very very very chocolatey.)

If you want to add dried sour cherries then use about 85g and mix them in after the dark chocolate.

Birthday cake

3rd May is Dan's birthday. We decided not to go out this year, but I still wanted to make it special so I gave him the option to choose any dinner he wanted. He chose beef wellington and dauphinoise potatoes - high effort, but his absolute favourite. I made myself a monkfish wellington, which was delicious. (I found the recipe on the BBC website here.)

But a birthday isn't a proper celebration without cake, so I had to make a birthday cake. Dan's not a particular fan of chocolate cakes and sponge cakes, and with just the two of us in our household we wouldn't get through that kind of cake before it went stale anyway. Instead I chose to make an Orange Polenta Cake - the recipe comes from the Ottolenghi cook book. I'm a total amateur with sugar cookery, so I had to make 3 attempts before I managed a proper caramel for the top of the cake, but I got there in the end. The citrusy-fresh orange scent of the cake was AMAZING as it cooked. Here it is straight out of the oven:


(although the colour cast seems a bit odd on this photo.)

And this is it once it had cooled and I'd glazed it with some of my Mum's homemade marmalade:



We had a slice of the cake each on Dan's birthday. Dan had his with a scoop of creme fraiche. The cake had a slightly grittier texture than a normal sponge (possibly because I coudn't find instant polenta). That wasn't unpleasant though - in fact it was rather nice. The cake was moist, slightly bitter on the top, very orangey and utterly gorgeous. I'd buy the recipe book just for this cake!

Traditionally you have to take cakes to work on a birthday, and orange cake didn't seem the most portable variety, so I also made some rasberry cupcakes. (Dan was fitting our new bathroom all weekend, so it seemed only fair that I assume responsibility for work cake snacks for him!) The recipe was from the Primrose Bakery cupcake book - a vanilla sponge swirled with homemade rasberry jam, then filled with a little spot of rasberry jam and iced with vanilla buttercream icing. I decorated them with a little grated white chocolate and silver sugar balls.



I know they look a bit girly and pink and white for a boy's birthday, but if you're going to get your girlfirend to make cakes for your office what do you expect?!



Of course he told everyone he made them himself. Some of them even believed it.

Croissants and other pastry delights

Generally speaking I'm not a massive lover of pastries for breakfast. They're one of those things that I occasionally get lured into buying by the smell, but then the taste almost never lives up to that promise. I usually find them too greasy, too flakey, and they just don't have enough flavour.

Of course there are some notable exceptions to every rule - I love the much breadier varieties that they make at the Natural Bread Company (an Oxfordshire bakery with a shop in Woodstock) - they're always buttery but not greasy; flakey, but not so much that you get annoyed with the bits of pastry all over you. They have texture and chewability. This, for me, is definitely how pastries should be.

Well, having set my bar quite high, I decided it was time to have a go at making breakfast pastries myself. I have a recipe book from the Bourke Street Bakery in Sydney, Australia which gives brilliantly clear instructions on how to make croissants. Time to take the plunge.

So here goes...

The night before, I mixed up a small amount of yeast, flour, milk and sugar, kneeded it well, then left it in the fridge overnight. This is the croissant ferment.


Next day I mixed the dough, kneeded it well and put back in the fridge. The instructions said to leave it there for at least 2 hours; I left mine for about 3 hours.


Next, I weighed out a truely extraordinary amount of butter. I actually used 400g instead of the recipe's 500g, as I wanted to achieve pastries that were a bit less greasy than the norm. I bashed the butter into a square about 1cm thick - I placed the butter between 2 pieces of baking parchement and hit it with a rolling pin. Quite theraputic!


After this I rolled the dough out into a rectangle about the same width as the butter square and about twice the length. I placed the butter in the middle, then folded the dough over the top.


The next step was to roll the dough out into a long rectangle then fold it over; I folded in thirds - one third towards the middle, then the other side over the top of that. I then returned the dough to the fridge to rest for 20 minutes. This had to be repeated twice more, turning the dough through 90 degrees each time I rolled it out. The dough was rolled out 3 times in total.


After a final rest in the fridge I had a laminated dough:

This was now ready to form into pastries.

I had inadvertantly made a hundred-weight of dough, so I had enough to make about 12-15 croissants and also about the same number of bear claws.

Here are the croissants, formed, risen (I let them rise for about an hour and a half, but if its a cool day it may take a bit longer), and ready to go into the oven:


I was very proud that the croissants actually looked like croissants. Amazing!



For the bear claws I made about 150g of frangipane and put a teaspoon of it in the centre of each piece of dough along with a teaspoon of damson jelly then folded the dough over and sealed the edges. Any jam would work nicely but I thought the slight sharpness of damsons would complement the frangipane.

The bear claws looked pretty good as they came out of the oven.



The house smelt lovely for the rest of the day after making these. I was really hoping that their taste would live up to the smell! When I finally did the taste test the next morning (5 minutes in the oven at 180C crisped them up beautifully) they were just as I'd hoped; flakey but still with plenty of dough-texture. The croissants were lovely with some homemade strawberry and mint jam, and the bear claws were tastey just as they came; no extras needed.

Just as well we both liked the outcome as we have freezer full of pastries now! This isn't a recipe I would make often as it is time-consuming and very messy, but I definitely will attempt it again. Its nice to be able to have pastries made to my own preferences. The recipe quantities makes such a lot of pastries that I have several months worth now. I will have to try making the Pain au Raisins recipe next time - its my favourite kind of pastry.



Full marks to the Bourke Street Bakery instructions. Its shaping up to have been an excellent cook-book purchase.

Apple tart

A while back I blogged my love of the Riverford Farm Cook book. In fact I love it so much that I have been evangelising, and I gave a copy to a friend for her birthday a few months ago. When I went to her place for lunch she obligingly served up a dish from the book - the apple and amaretti tart. It was light, crunchy and yummy, and even better I'd never made it myself. So good to be introduced to a recipe you had under your nose the whole time but hadn't made!

This weekend I had a group of lovely ladies over for a meal, so the time had come to make an attempt at the tart. It was super-simple to make, and handily could be made in advance and served at room temperature - the perfect pudding for when you don't want to be spending your time in the kitchen instead of with your guests. The base is not dissimilar to a cheese cake base, so you end up with something like tart tatin but with a crunchier base. I really liked it, especially with a small scoop of creme fraiche on the side.


Not my tart in this picture I'm afraid, but mine did look a lot like it!

I shall now go forth and experiment with different flavour combinations along the same lines - maybe pear with almonds in the base, or rhubarb with ginger biscuits, or perhaps subsitiute the apples for peaches in the amaretti version. Oh the possibilities....

The recipe can be found here. I didn't use quite as much apple as directed as about 200g of apple slices filled my tart tin nicely. I notice that the apples here are a lot more overlapping than mine though, so presumably that's why I didn't need quite so much fruit.

In praise of spontaneity

A couple of weeks ago Dan came back from town bringing treats in brown paper bags: One small blueberry amandine tart, one strawberry tart, and one bakewell tart. They were much appreciated in my cold-filled state. We very democratically divided each into thirds, sharing them out for lunch with our guest.

That blueberry tart really stuck in my mind, so when blueberries were on special offer this week I stocked up and hunted high and low to find a recipe for the Amandine tart. Eventually achieved (it was surprisingly tricky to track one down), I made mini tarts so that the leftovers would be more portable for lunches.



The tart is a wonderful combination of crisp, flakey pastry, filled with sweet, juicy blueberries and a custardy sponge, all topped off with the crunch of flaked almonds. YUM. A new favourite. Keeps well in the fridge too; it may be the perfect pudding.



A different kind of serendipity lead me to the other subject of this post; griddled vegetables and halloumi. I'd never eaten or cooked halloumi before, but the cheese man at the farmer's market had made some Halloumi-esque cheese and so it seemed like the perfect time to try it. I griddled a load of aubergine, courgette and red onion slices, topped it with the griddled cheese, and hey presto, lunch was served. It certainly helped me get over my long hilly run! It will have to become a regular feature, if only so that I get more use out of the griddle pan which is sadly underused.

An on-going love affair

I do love rhubarb.

I find it particularly appealling at this time of year when its the forced variety available. It comes out a beautiful shade of pink when its stewed. Sadly, I think there's probably only a very short amount time left in the forced rhubarb season, so I've been eek out every last morsel of enjoyment I can from it! (Although it does feel wierd to buy rhubarb after years of having it in the garden - I must plant some for next year.)

So far my rhubarb experiments haven't got much further than crumble, stewed with strawberries, or cheesecake. All fantastic. However, browsing the internet I stumbled across Rhubarb Custard cake, and that sounded like it just had to be tried.



And indeed it was delicious. Lovely and crunchy on the top, with the moist texture of drizzle cake on the inside. Perfect served warm for pudding, but also a big hit with my work colleagues the next day.

The recipe can be found here on the Lazy Giraffe blog. She makes pretty jewellery too.