New Metro Design

Despite my somewhat infamous exploits with a microwave, I don’t really go in for much kitchen gadgetry. I weigh my ingredients in pounds and ounces on a set of old sweet-shop scales, I use a rat-tailed tablespoon like the one my Mum used when I was little, and I make my pastry by hand … with an antique rolling pin that I found in a charity shop.

However … when Rose last visited, she generously (and probably in fear of what she already knew to be the rather primitive state of my kitchen cupboards) brought me some goodies from a company called New Metro Design – a beater attachment for my stand mixer, a lemon zester and a mixing bowl (aka the BeaterBlade®, the ZestN’est™ and the MixerMate™Bowl).

The idea behind each of these designs is that they take an irritating culinary conundrum and solve it with the invention of an innovative and efficient tool.

So – the BeaterBlade makes it unecessary to scrape down the sides of the bowl while mixing …

… the ZestN’est eliminates the mess and stress of zesting …

… and the MixerMate Bowl prevents all that splattering you usually get when you try to do anything with a hand-held mixer (or blender, as I was doing here).

After thoroughly trying and testing each design in the process of baking a lemon tart recently, I have to confess – these gadgets are fantastic. Remarkably fantastic.

Even O, who is fiercely opposed to any form of kitchen hokery-pokery, was impressed – so much so that he now uses the zester for pretty much anything that needs grating. He even allows it to have its own space in the top cutlery drawer …

I got in touch with Gary Fallowes, founder of New Metro Design and inventor, designer and developer of BeaterBlade, to find out a little bit more about his products. He kindly agreed to answer my (many!) questions …

Where did the idea for the BeaterBlade come from?

While making cheesecake I was frustrated by how often I needed to stop mixing and scrape the bowl, especially when the batter was cold…it would stick to everything. I soon discovered that even creaming butter and sugar required constant bowl scraping.

What were the first experiments/product types like?

The very first prototype was a soda bottle top, a wire hangar and soft plastic made from an electrical cord product. BeaterBlade® actually started off as a single blade scraper for meringue type batters…but we had issues with food ending up in the next room. The current design took about 2 years to develop. Finding the right plastics took quite some time.

How extensively did you test your invention?

To the extent I was driving my engineers crazy. I was making prototypes with 1mm increment changes just to make sure it would work perfectly. I bought more than 11 mixers and tested each one for hundreds and hundreds of hours while at the same time sending out prototypes to friends, family and folks like Rose to test. I also had Nemko Laboratories do bench tests to make sure the mixers were not getting damaged and the actual BeaterBlade was safe. Safety is my #1 concern, then function.

How did you end up finding an investor?

The project was funded personally and through a mentor / investor.

Why the name ‘New Metro Design’?

In NYC, in the 1930s, my grandfather owned an envelope company called Metro Envelope Corp…I’m carrying on the tradition of his name.

Do you make BeaterBlades for all different models and sizes of stand mixers?

There’s a BeaterBlade for most all KitchenAid® models as well as Cuisinart®, Viking®, DeLonghi™ & certain Kenwood® model mixers. We have a license agreement with Breville, which makes a BeaterBlade for their mixers under NewMetro’s name. We also make a large aluminium H-20 BeaterBlade for the Hobart 20-Quart mixers…that’s really fun to watch.

How easy is it to buy a BeaterBlade?

BeaterBlade is currently in about 3,500 brick & mortar stores such as Bed Bath and Beyond, BonTon, Kitchen Collections; online at Amazon, Solutions Magazine, CHEFs Catalog. We have distribution in 10 countries. You can find USA stores by zip code here.

How much does the BeaterBlade cost? Is it more expensive than just buying a regular beater attachment, for example?

Prices range from $24.95 to $40. It’s a bit more expensive than traditional flat beaters but it also accomplishes much more.

… and where is it manufactured?

Southern California!

Isn’t the continuous scraping down of the sides of the bowl going to stress out the motor of my stand mixer?

Not at all, and we have lab reports to prove it. BeaterBlade puts less stress on the mixer than if you were to make a white bread with the dough hook.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NniOVKK8b54

Is the BeaterBlade certified for commercial use?

Yes, it’s listed ANSI / NSF2 with Underwriters Laboratories (UL).

You make other kitchen tools as well as the BeaterBlade … ?

NewMetro designed the ZestN’est™ citrus zester, MixerMate™ Bowl for hand mixers, the H-20 for Hobart mixers and we just launched a citrus juicer called JuiceLab™.

Do the same principles of design underpin all of your products?

I go for safety first, then performance. I want consumers to have a positive experience when using my products.

Have you won any awards?

We won best product in our category at the Gourmet Housewares Show in 2009, and we placed runner up in IDEA magazine’s product of the year 2010. Some others as well.

What does the future of New Metro Design look like …?

We’re partnering with Rose Levy Beranbaum, bringing together her incredible accuracy and talent with NewMetro’s design capabilities and attention to detail. We have lots of exciting products in R&D. We love how accessible Rose is to baking enthusiasts via her very popular blog. She takes the time to carefully answer questions and wants people to be successful, just like I do.

Can you give us your original cheesecake recipe … the one that started everything …?

It’s actually on the website: Gary’s Sour Cream Cheesecake 🙂

Thank you very much for all your replies, Gary. I’m looking forward to trying out your recently-launched JuiceLab in my newly-gadgeted-up kitchen!

Oh – the lemon tart I was making …?

It was good 🙂

4 Comments

by amerrierworld on February 22, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in gadgets

Tagged baking, cooking, food

Posted by amerrierworld on February 22, 2012

https://amerrierworld.com/2012/02/22/new-metro-design/

Rocky Road Sticky Toffee Crispie Cakes

Don’t make these.

Just don’t.

Rocky Road …

Sticky toffee …

Crispie cakes …

You’re going to regret this.

Okay then, you can’t say I didn’t warn you …

Rocky Road Sticky Toffee Crispie Cakes

375g (x3 boxes) Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers
225g pitted dates
300g Green and Black’s 72% cook’s chocolate
300g Green and Black’s white chocolate
200g butter
100g mini marshmallows
115g Rice Krispies

Line a 20x30cm cake pan with baking parchment, leaving flappy bits hanging over the sides to use as handles for pulling the cake out of the pan.

Chop fingers into small, bite-sized pieces (the Cadbury’s chocolate fingers that is – not your own).

Whizz the dates in a food processor until they turn into a smooth paste.

Melt the chocolates and butter in a bowl set over a pan of warm water.

Stir in the dates and mix until combined.

Add the chopped fingers, marshmallows and crispies. Stir to incorporate evenly.

Scrape into the prepared cake pan and spread with a spatula. Leave the cake to set in the fridge for an hour or so, or for as long as you can put off eating it (whichever comes sooner).

Unmould and cut into squares.

18 Comments

by amerrierworld on February 18, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in biscuits and cookies, cakes, chocolate, confectionary

Tagged baking, cake, chocolate, cooking, food, recipes

Posted by amerrierworld on February 18, 2012

https://amerrierworld.com/2012/02/18/rocky-road-sticky-toffee-crispie-cakes/

The Best-Ever Apple Cake Recipe

Perhaps I should qualify this before the lawyers come knocking on my door. I’m going to give you the best-ever apple cake recipe, the only recipe you’ll ever want to use from now on, the recipe that beats all other apple cake recipes hands down … according to my husband.

I’ve written before about my husband’s peculiar lack of a sweet tooth, so the fact that he endorses this recipe wholeheartedly should be merit in itself. It wasn’t a snap decision on his part, either – this recipe is the result of many failed and not-quite-right trials over the course of several years of trying to match my apple cakes to his specific expectations. It had to be moist and taste of apples rather than spices. Not too sweet. No faffy crumbly topping stuff. No sultanas or raisins. Noticeable apple chunks – none of that puréed muck. And it didn’t stop there. Nothing baked in a round cake pan – he wanted his slices to be square.

Not demanding in the slightest then, huh?

Anyway, I’d given up. And then we moved to a house with an orchard at the bottom of its garden.

As autumn turned into winter, I sent my three children out to collect the windfalls in T’s little red wagon. Seven truckloads later, I faced a showdown situation. If I couldn’t create that perfect apple cake recipe with such an abundance of readily-available fruit, then I would have failed forever as a loving, doting wife and homemaker. Well, whatever – you get the picture.

The pressure wasn’t entirely self-induced. O did point out that his birthday was coming up and please, could I bake an apple cake for him to take into work …?

So I stayed up late, burnt the midnight oil, sweated and slaved, worked day and night …

Actually, I hit on the bright idea of mixing a few appple chunks into my favourite yellow cake recipe, tossing it all into a rectangular cake pan and slamming it into the oven for 40 minutes or so to see what happened.

What happened was the best apple cake ever … according to my husband.

PS – Chris from Green Valley Cyder said that he’d eaten many apple cakes but that this was “one of the best.” So you don’t have to take just my husband’s word for it.

The Best-Ever Apple Cake (by me and according to my husband)

13 1/4 oz peeled, cored and diced Bramley apples
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 to 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 to 1/2 tsp mace (or grated nutmeg)
7 oz unsalted butter, room temperature
13 1/4 oz castor sugar
5 1/4 oz eggs (weighed without shells), room temperature
2 3/4 oz egg yolks (weighed without shells), room temperature
1 tbsp vanilla extract
8 oz plain flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
160 ml whole milk, room temperature

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (165 degrees C for a fan-assisted oven).

Grease and base-line a 9″ x 13″ rectangular cake pan.

Peel, core and dice the apples (c. 4 largeish Bramleys). Toss in the lemon juice, cinnamon and mace (add as much or as little of these spices to suit your own taste). Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl until they are very light and fluffy (start to beat slowly and then gradually increase the speed – this allows air bubbles to be incorporated and expanded without popping).

Combine the whole eggs, egg yolks and vanilla in another bowl. Mix with a fork, then add gradually to the creamed butter and sugar, beating well to combine after each addition.

Whisk the dry ingredients together in yet another bowl. Beat 1/3 of the dry ingredients into the batter, then 1/2 of the milk. Repeat and then add the final 1/3 of the dry ingredients (ie. dry/wet/dry/wet/dry).

Combine half of the apples with the batter, mixing gently to distribute evenly. Scrape the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Scatter the remaining apple pieces over the top of the batter.

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes until the cake is golden and springy, and a tester comes out clean (unless you’ve speared an apple, that is).

Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn the cake out of the pan and cool on a wire rack. Trim the sides and cut into squares.

8 Comments

by amerrierworld on January 31, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in cakes, fruit

Tagged baking, cake, cooking, recipes

Posted by amerrierworld on January 31, 2012

https://amerrierworld.com/2012/01/31/the-best-ever-apple-cake-recipe/

No-Bake Chocolate Ganache Tart

Although we don’t have a television, which possibly makes us a slightly unusual family, we do watch a variety of TV programmes via BBC iPlayer and 4OD. Recently, we enjoyed Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall’s latest River Cottage series in which he gave up eating meat for four months over the summer. The programmes in this series charted his discovery of new vegetarian combinations and dishes, ranging from simple soups and salads to lavish banquets and wedding feasts.

Perhaps the most intriguing creation from the entire series however was Laura Coxeter’s raw chocolate ganache tart. Prepared with a heady mix of pecans, medjool dates, avocados and cacao powder, it really is a work of pure genius.

The idea behind the tart is that it can be served to raw food eaters, vegans and anyone wishing to avoid dairy, gluten and soya in their diet. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t normally associate such a recipe with something that turns out to be richly chocolately and sinfully sumptuous. But Laura really did appear to have pulled it off, judging by the velvet gooiness of the ganache and the fervent lip-smacking of its tasters. I was inspired to give it a go.

Now, I have to confess that I’m not a raw food eater. Okay, it’s probably not such a huge confession – Laura’s the first raw food eater that I’ve ever come across. I did therefore make a few changes to the tart, which will no doubt have raw foodies shuddering in their graves. In essence, my recipe is more or less true to the original although not an exact replication.

The secret behind the ganache is avocado. Whizzed up in a food processor with cocoa powder and sugar, avocados form the basis of a smooth, luxurious texture that is normally achieved by mixing chocolate and cream. The whole tart is ridiculously easy to make – you just need to make sure that you’ve allowed plenty of time for it to chill and set before serving.

The finished tart got a thumbs-up from my children, and I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to present it as the pièce de résistance at the end of a more grown-up dinner party. All in all, this recipe is just in time for the festive season. Happy Holidays 🙂

No-Bake Chocolate Ganache Tart (adapted from a recipe by Laura Coxeter)

For the base
300g/10 1/2 oz pecans
1 tsp salt
200g/7 oz medjool dates

For the filling
4 medium, ripe avocados
150g/5 1/2 oz rice bran oil
Seeds of 2 whole vanilla pods
200g/7 oz cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
300g/10 1/2 oz castor sugar

Blend the pecans in a food processor, then add the salt and dates. Whizz them all together until the mixture balls into a dough.

Press the dough into the base of a 9″ springform pan. Chill in the freezer to harden.

Peel and de-stone the avocados, then blend the pulp in the food processor. Add the oil, vanilla seeds, cocoa, salt and sugar and process until smooth.

Scrape the filling onto the base and spread evenly with a spatula or palette knife.

Set the tart in the freezer for an hour before serving.

14 Comments

by amerrierworld on December 8, 2011 • Permalink

Posted in chocolate, fruit, puddings

Tagged baking, chocolate, cooking, dessert, recipes

Posted by amerrierworld on December 8, 2011

https://amerrierworld.com/2011/12/08/no-bake-chocolate-ganache-tart/

First Bake

One of the consequences of moving house last week is that I’ve had to say goodbye to my Rangemaster induction cooker.

While its new owner gets to grip with cast iron saucepans, I’ve returned to cooking on a standard Belling ceramic halogen hob with a rather fierce electric fan oven. Although it seems to be handling fish fingers and chips fairly well, I’ve been putting off the moment of baking anything less straightforward for fear that everything would crumble under the intensity of the fan.

Yeterday however, my children returned home with the intention to bake spotty cookies for their school cake sale today to raise money for Children in Need. I ventured into the garden shed with a torch to find the baking trays and wire cooling racks we needed. With the torch batteries failing, I dug down through the piles and piles of boxes. Naturally, I’d packed the baking trays at the very bottom of a very large box full of cake pans and mixing bowls, and I still have no clue at all about where I stored the wire cooling racks. Now completely in the dark, I eventually gave up the search and pulled out instead a couple of pizza trays with circular holes in the base – not quite as aerated as a cooling rack, but I thought I could turn them upside down and perhaps the cookies wouldn’t end up too soggy-bottomed if they cooled there rather than on their hot trays.

And so at 7pm yesterday evening we set about baking our first batch of cookies in our new oven in our new house.

We used our go-to cookie dough recipe, then pressed some pink Smarties (the ones that support the National Breast Cancer Campaign) into the top of each cookie before they cooled and set to make them ‘spotty’ (“Show your spots, let’s raise lots“).

It turned out that I needn’t have worried at all about baking in my new oven. I reduced the temperature by 10 degrees C and the cookies baked evenly and completely as expected. Perhaps I’ll try baking a cake again sometime soon …