All posts tagged food

Boom Boom Ain’t It Great To Be Floury

If you’d asked me ten years ago whether I thought I could ever get excited over a bag of flour, I’d have died laughing. No way! I mean, come on – are you serious? A bag of what? My thoughts on flour (not that I ever lost any sleep over them then) were more along the lines of, “Where the hell is it?” in a supermarket rather than of an ecstatic, jump-up-and-down-with-glee sort of variety.

But that was before I came across an old, slightly dog-eared copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cake Bible in a second-hand shop in Kirkcudbright. That was back in 2007. I soon became embroiled in a search to find a replacement for the bleached cake flour that seemed to be so crucial to the success of her most-raved-about recipes. Not that I’m obsessive or anything. Just saying …

Cake layers baked with untreated (L) and heat-treated (R) flour.

I couldn’t simply ship in a whole load of cake flour from the US because the bleaching of flour had been prohibited in the UK since 1997. A bit of online research (okay, googling) revealed that the heat-treatment of flour provides a viable and successful alternative to bleached flour for use in high-ratio cake recipes. Eh Voilà! (I thought). Only, no. After tracking down a supply of heat-treated cake flour at Carr’s Flour Mills Ltd, I phoned them and was frustrated to be told that they only sold it in vat-sized amounts, and they wouldn’t sell any to me anyway because I’m not a business. To be honest, I think they were highly suspicious of my inquiry. They probably thought I was some sort of rival milling industry.

One thing led to another and my poor microwave came in for a bit of a battering as I nuked batch after batch of different flours in an attempt to recreate the heat-treatment process at home. When my hair-brained experiments actually began to generate visible improvements in the cakes I was baking, I started blogging about my results. I was surprised to find that I wasn’t the only one desperately seeking cake flour …

Why on earth were the UK flour mills so reluctant to sell their heat-treated cake flour to home bakers? John Lister from Shipton Mill popped over to A Merrier World to explain a bit of the background:

From the merry Miller in the wood…..Greetings…..stunned by the ingeniuity in the world, happily chortling here to learn of such madness and can hardly believe what happens in the kitchens of England……brilliant news on the cake flour, some years ago the global millers used to spend their time pumping chlorine gas through flour to denature and bleach it to make a perfect functional flour suited to cake making……in the last few years the process was outlawed for health reasons and heat treatment replaced it…..industrial sauce and cake manufacturers now use soft flours that are heat treated, such heat treatment processes are not readily available to smaller millers, still struggling with stone age technology, (Mill stones etc) so the idea of microwaving the flour is fascinating and a perfect solution by the sounds of it, am off to try this out, and will let you know the progress, John

Despite the obvious demand for heat-treated cake flour among home bakers, it seemed likely therefore that supplies would be restricted to commercial use for the foreseeable future.

So … does that explain why I’m so delighted to discover that at least two mills are now selling bags of heat-treated cake flour to individual consumers? (If you still don’t get my excitement, then you probably won’t have read this far anyway).

Dasha kindly left a comment on A Merrier World to let me know about the 16kg bags being sold by FWP Matthews Ltd. She says, “You need to place the order over the phone as it is not listed in their online shop. The woman I spoke to was super helpful and said that they usually despatch same day with a next day courier.”

The second supplier came to my notice via a comment from AliceL on Rose’s blog. This heat-treated cake flour is being sold in 2kg bags as The Ultimate Cake Making Flour by Cinnamon Square. Furthermore, Alice reported the results of her comparison of the variously-treated cake flours:

Inspired by Rose and Kate, I baked and compared 3 versions of [Rose’s Favorite Yellow Layer] cake:
– one with USA Cake flour (imported via eBay at significant cost 🙂
– one with Kate Flour (made using UK Shipton Mills cake flour, no cornflour)
– one with UK “Cinnamon Square” heated Treated Cake flour (9.65% protein, no cornflour)

Results were all excellent. All three had good x2 rise and were tasty, moist and melting.
USA Cake Flour slightly higher in the centre (~2mm) and marginally finer texture.
Kate and Cinnamon Sq Heat Treated flour cakes were indistinguishable from each other. Just very slightly more fluffy/crumbly than USA cake flour – a tiny bit of Xantham gum would work there I suspect.

Can you hear my feet banging now as I jump up and down with glee?!

Sorry – must dash. Off to buy some flour …

18 Comments

by amerrierworld on May 18, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in cakes, flour

Tagged baking, cake, cooking, food, recipes

Posted by amerrierworld on May 18, 2012

https://amerrierworld.com/2012/05/18/boom-boom-aint-it-great-to-be-floury/

Blast Off Biscuits

Conversation at home can become quite surreal sometimes. Take yesterday, for example. My three children (aged 9, 6 and 5 years … which reminds me that I really should get around to updating my About page – they would all seriously object to being described as ‘small’ now) were sitting around the kitchen table, drawing pictures whilst waiting for their dinner to appear magically before them.

M: Is that a spaceship?

L: (no response)

M: Please tell me that’s a spaceship because it looks like one.

L: It’s a fried egg.

M: Really?

L: No. It’s a spaceship.

T: It looks like a fried egg.

M: Flying saucers look like fried eggs. That’s a spaceship.

I’m enormously unqualified on the subject of space travel and was therefore unable to contribute anything particularly insightful to their discussion. Instead, I mumbled something about chocolate and biscuits and rockets and stars and cookie cutters. There was a brief silence while the three of them stared at me and came to a mutual, unspoken conclusion that their Mum was going crazy again, and then they bent their heads once more over L’s picture and continued debating the various attributes of fried eggs and flying saucers.

Although I have to admit that I may at times have a fairly tenuous grip on reality, on this occasion I wasn’t spouting nonsense. You see, my post on Jubilee Nutella Cookies was featured recently in a review of favourite blogs by the online gift shop, Dotcomgiftshop. I was then invited by the very friendly Dotcomgiftshop team to review some of their products and present them to … well … you lot, really. Normally I’d say thanks but no thanks (hrumph corporate hrumph blogs hrumph advertising), but I took a look at their website and was swayed by the quirky appeal of their product ranges. Candy-striped fizzy pop cups and retro popcorn holders, vintage party ice cream tubs with wooden spoons – just like the ones the ice cream ladies sold from trays hanging around their necks in the interval between the trailers and the main feature in old picture houses. And Charlie & Lola hot water bottles (I can always be swayed by anything Charlie & Lola).

Sorry, I’m getting side-tracked. What was I going on about again? Oh yes, fried eggs. No, that was my children. Chocolate and biscuits and rockets and stars and cookie cutters – that was it.

Well, the Dotcomgiftshop team kindly sent me a Spaceboy Children’s Baking Set to try out at home – which is why I thought that the mention of chocolate and biscuits and rockets and stars and cookie cutters might be something not entirely unrelated to my children’s apparent interest in space travel. Once they’d caught on to the idea, they thought so too.

The baking set contains a spaceboy-themed collection of cupcake cases, rocket and star cookie cutters, a small wooden spoon and rolling pin, a child-sized metal whisk and a gingham pinny (which has very useful ties rather than a loop to go around the neck – which avoids the need to thread a too-big loop through an excess of waist ties just to stop the whole thing slipping downwards). T was also delighted to find a booklet for keeping a record of his recipes. We wrote up the first recipe in his book together this afternoon – Blast Off Biscuits.

I love this biscuit dough. It’s so smooth and velvety but holds its shape beautifully when baked. I can’t remember where the original recipe came from so many years ago, but when T wrote on his Mother’s Day card that he loves me because I make chocolate biscuits, these are the chocolate biscuits he was talking about. Biscuit love.

And so my little helper and I set off on the ultimate spaceboy baking trip.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 …

BLAST OFF!

Blast Off Biscuits (as written by us in T’s little spaceboy recipe book)

7 oz butter
6 oz golden caster sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
12 oz plain flour
2 oz cocoa powder

Cream the butter and sugar.

Beat in the egg and vanilla.

Mix in the flour and cocoa.

Make a ball.

Wrap in clingfilm.

Chill in the fridge for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

Line a baking tray with parchment.

Roll out the dough.

Use a rocket and a star cutter to cut out the biscuits.

Lift them onto the tray.

Bake for 6 to 10 minutes.

Leave to cool on the tray.

8 Comments

by amerrierworld on May 12, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in biscuits and cookies, chocolate

Tagged baking, chocolate, food, recipes

Posted by amerrierworld on May 12, 2012

https://amerrierworld.com/2012/05/12/blast-off-biscuits/

Not A Chocolate Fudge Birthday Cake

My oven and I have had a serious falling out. I want cakes with smooth tops. My oven obviously prefers cakes with cracked tops – because that’s what it keeps giving me. Volcanic eruptions and craters to rival those on Venus.

I know the theory. Peaked and cracked tops = oven temperature too high so the sides set too quickly and the uncooked batter pushes up through the top of the cake.

Simple, no?

I baked four chocolate fudge cakes last week, hoping to resolve my disagreement with my oven in time for T’s 5th birthday.

Cake 1: Having already discovered that my oven has a rather blowy fan, I reduced the temperature for the first cake by 10 degrees C. The top cracked.

Cake 2: I reduced the temperature to 160 degrees C. The top cracked.

Cake 3: I kept the temperature at 160 degrees C and used magi-cake strips. The top cracked.

Cake 4: I reduced the temperature to 150 degrees C and used magi-cake strips. The top cracked.

Cake 5: There wasn’t one. Or a cake 6 or 7 or 8. Huh.

I know for 99.9% sure that there isn’t a problem with either the recipe or with my mixing technique. And my oven thermometer is accurate. So, it has to be something the oven is doing. O said it didn’t really matter – T’s birthday cake would taste fine anyway. But that’s not the point – it DOES matter! (Well, it matters to me if not to O).

Frustrated (an understatement), I fired off a tirade of abuse against my oven in an email to Rose. She sympathized (phew, at last – someone who understands!) and wondered if there’s an upper heating element in my oven that kicks on every few minutes. She suggested putting the cake on the bottom rack and putting a sheet pan on the upper rack to protect the top. I’ll try that next time … if I can ever bring myself to forgive my oven for its attitude problem.

As for T’s birthday cake – well, I salvaged the two least-volcanic examples, grouted the cracks with generous dollops of buttercream, smothered the entire cake and crumbled a chocolate flake over the top. Far from disappointing, the extra chocolatey gooiness filling the cracks delighted T and his party friends. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess.

No, I didn’t snap any nude shots of the cracked cake tops – you’ll just have to image what they looked like underneath their chocolate clothing.

My recalcitrant oven did manage to pull off one redeeming success however. Conceived originally as nothing more than an attempt to use up the various odd bits of things in my baking cupboard, it’s a happy miracle that I actually kept some sort of account of what I was throwing into the mixing bowl. Without that, I wouldn’t have a clue how to make them again. And L has demanded more of these – even though she can’t say ‘Chocolate Cookie Choc Chip Bounty Bar‘ without getting her tongue in a twist.

Chocolate Cookie Choc Chip Bounty Bars (aka Not A Chocolate Fudge Birthday Cake)

Cookie Base
7 3/4 oz butter
5 1/2 oz caster sugar
6 oz light muscovado sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
9 oz bread flour
4 oz cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Coconut Topping
7 oz desiccated coconut
4 oz caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
12 oz chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (depending on your relationship with your oven. Ha) Grease and base line a 20 x 30 cm baking tray with parchment (leave a couple of handles if you like so you can hoik the whole thing out of the tray when it’s cool).

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.

Lightly beat the eggs together with the vanilla and add gradually to the creamed mixture.

Mix together the dry ingredients, then stir into the dough until just combined.

Drop large spoonfulls of the dough into the baking tray. Bear in mind that the dough will spread during baking – aim to place the spoonfulls so that they will spread into each other and cover the base of the baking tray. I had enough dough left over to make 6 or 7 cookies or so (sorry, I haven’t adjusted the cookie recipe so that it makes exactly the amount you need for the base. Just enjoy the extra cookies).

Bake for 7 mins until the cookie is just beginning to set but is still underdone underneath the upper crust. Set aside to cool a little.

Make the coconut topping. Mix the coconut with the eggs until they are well combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Carefully spread the coconut mixture over the cookie base. Pat it gently with the back of a spoon but don’t press it so hard that it falls through the cookie.

Bake for a further 10 to 15 mins until the coconut is golden and set.

Leave to cool in the tray, then cut into bars.

1 Comment

by amerrierworld on May 6, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in cakes, chocolate, confectionary, traybakes and slices

Tagged baking, chocolate, cookies, food, recipes

Posted by amerrierworld on May 6, 2012

https://amerrierworld.com/2012/05/06/not-a-chocolate-fudge-birthday-cake/

Baked Bean and Sausage Pasties

What keeps you going?

I’ve been asked that question many times over the last several months as I’ve struggled with the twin demons of anorexia and bipolar disorder. And my answer has always been, “My family. My children.”

Take yesterday, for example. There we were, in the middle of a busy supermarket – my three children and me (always an expensive way to do the shopping) – deciding what to cook for their dinner. Surrounded by so many tasty options on the shelves in every aisle, M nevertheless said, “Baked bean and sausage pasties – the ones that you make.”

So that was what we did.

Times like this are what keep me going.

Baked Bean and Sausage Pasties

7 oz bread flour (I know, an unusual choice of flour for pastry – but it needs to be strong enough to hold the filling)
3 oz butter
water
2 tins of baked beans and sausages

Rub the butter into the flour and stir in just enough water to form a dough. Wrap in cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for 30 mins or so.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

Divide the pastry into four pieces. Roll out each piece into a circle.

Empty the cans of baked beans into a sieve to strain out most of the runny tomato sauce (otherwise the pasties disintegrate into a soggy mush. Trust me – I’ve tried it).

Spoon four mini sausages (assuming there are 8 in each tin. Can you tell I know my Heinz baked beans …?) and a quarter of the baked beans into the centre of each pastry circle. Brush the edges with water and stretch the lower half of the circle up and over the filling. Seal the edges and crimp. Snip two or three slits in the top of each pasty to let out the steam (and sauce!).

Place each pasty on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 25 to 30 mins until the pastry is golden and cooked.

Eat warm.

2 Comments

by amerrierworld on April 15, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in meat, pies and pastry, pulses

Tagged baking, cooking, food, recipes

Posted by amerrierworld on April 15, 2012

https://amerrierworld.com/2012/04/15/baked-bean-and-sausage-pasties/

Lentils with Lemon and Coriander

Inspired by M’s contagious enthusiasm for all things Roman, I was tempted last night to try out a particularly tasty-sounding recipe from the Roman Cooking book that M had taken into school. I love lentils, I adore lemons, and coriander is one of my favourite herbs. How could a recipe entitled ‘Lentils with Lemon and Coriander’ be anything but delicious? At least it didn’t feature those peacock brains and stuffed dormice that M had talked about.

The cookery book in question is a collection of recipes for everyday Roman food by Mark Grant. According to the blurb, he taught classics for more than twenty years, translated numerous culinary works of the ancient world and worked also as a cook and catering manager. Encouragingly for us twenty-first century cooks, he adapts his translations of Roman recipes to use modern kitchen equipment, less time-consuming methods and readily-available ingredients. There’s none of that ‘These should be put in a jar with water and left in the sun for forty days‘ stuff – simply bring the ingredients to the boil and simmer for forty minutes.

Another refreshing feature of the book is that Grant has based its recipes on more than just the writings of Apicius (who seems to have had a peculiar penchant for tender larks’ tongues and roasted flamingoes). In fact, Grant goes so far as to state in his introduction that ‘none of the recipes in this book come from the pages of Apicius, something that has not been attempted before.’ Instead of sensational recipes for lavish banquets and extravagant feasts, Grant takes the theme of everyday Roman food as his starting point. This means that his recipes offer us a singular opportunity to eat the ordinary food of the Roman Empire and taste the simple dishes of the humble wine bars, fried-fish shops and backstreet restaurants of that time.

The lenticula recipe that caught my eye yesterday comes from a series of letters on food by a sixth-century Byzantine Greek named Anthimus. Whilst Anthimus conceived these letters as advice to the Frankish king on how to eat healthily (he was, after all, a physician), his observations about food are credited now as being both the first French cookery book and the last cookbook to come out of the Roman Empire. That’s quite a reputation to have gained from the odd bit of letter-writing.

After my trip to the small Tesco (okay, I confess – I do still shop there, even after my chicken rant) in Exeter High Street failed to produce any satisfactory lentils or red wine vinegar for the recipe I wanted to try out, I eventually found the missing ingredients I needed at Carluccios. Splashing out? Perhaps. But if you’re going to do a thing properly …

The result?

O and I both agreed that we will definitely, most certainly be keeping this recipe among our favourites. Although the mix of lentils, red wine vinegar and lemons isn’t necessarily the most obvious flavour combination, it really does work. It isn’t just quirky for the sake of being exotic or adventurous. It is tasty too – something which is quite rare for an historical cookbook.

Unfortunately though, it isn’t quite so photogenic as those roasted flamingoes might have been. But hey – how pretty can a plate of lentils ever look?

Smile and wave boys, smile and wave.

Lentils with Lemon and Coriander (adapted from a recipe by Mark Grant)

200g/6 oz Umbrian lentils
1 tbsp Chianti wine vinegar
Juice of half a lemon
1 slice of lemon
1 tbsp olive oil
100ml water
2 tsp ground coriander
A handful of fresh coriander leaves
Sea salt, to taste

Boil the lentils in a pint of water (or more … ours needed extra) for about 20 to 30 minutes until tender.

Drain and rinse, then add the vinegar, lemon juice, lemon slice, olive oil, water and ground coriander.

Simmer gently for 20 minutes (with the lid on to start, then remove as necessary to reduce).

Chop the fresh coriander leaves finely (or rustically, as I did) and sprinkle them over the top of the lentils just before serving.

3 Comments

by amerrierworld on March 29, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in cookbooks, pulses

Tagged cooking, food, recipes

Posted by amerrierworld on March 29, 2012

https://amerrierworld.com/2012/03/29/lentils-with-lemon-and-coriander/