Wedding Cupcakes

This year is definitely turning out to be a Year of Weddings. We had one wedding last weekend, another one today and we have six more to fit in between now and the end of August.

So when my friends Clare and Adam asked me to make some cupcakes to serve at the end of the their wedding service, it seemed fitting that I should turn to Samantha Blears' Love Bakery: Cupcakes from the Heart. This is an extremely pretty book, with loads of cupcake ideas.

As with all cupcakes, the icing really is the main event, and the prettier the better. I am definitely not the world's best with a piping bag, so I was pleased to read Samantha Blears' advice that the best thing to do is to 'Add the love' as she puts it, with flowers, sprinkles and other embellishments. These are designed to cover up the mistakes, but actually end up making the cakes look even more special.

With a good quantity of cakes to make, I invested in some flower and butterfly cutters as well as some pink royal icing from Hobbycraft. I had not discovered their cake-decorating aisle before, but I may well be hooked! Pink glitter sprinkles also helped to hide where my swirls had become more splodge.

The cakes are rose flavoured - to regular sponge cake batter, add a teaspoon of rose extract, and with rose buttercream icing (again, just add a teaspoon or two of rose extract to the icing). Now I'm off to find a large star-shaped icing nozzle...

Baked Porridge

A few weeks ago, it was National Breakfast Week. On The Archers, everyone was having breakfast - bacon butties, Full English, porridge, cereal, you name it. The following week, I was on half term. While visiting my parents, and flicking through one of my mum's magazines, I found this recipe for baked porridge.

Porridge is one of those things that you eat because you feel you should. It's true, it does keep you filled up much longer than cereal or toast, but it also takes ages to cook. I'd much rather have those extra 10 minutes in bed than stirring oats in a saucepan only to have to leave half of it because it's too hot to eat. To be honest, my breakfast is more often eaten at my desk in an effort to beat the rush hour traffic.

But when I saw this recipe, I really wanted to give it a go. It's by Bill Granger, that super-healthy Aussie chef, and although it does have some sugar in it, its very little compared to your average breakfast cereal. But the best thing about this baked porridge is the taste. It's so much better than that claggy, grey, sawdusty taste that stays with you all day. This porridge doesn't taste healthy.

My plan, at some point, is to bake this on a Sunday, and then to take it in tupperware to work, where I can eat it at my desk. That hasn't happened yet, but I'm working on it.

Ingredients
135g porrdge oats
75g sultanas
1tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Sea salt
3 tbsp soft brown sugar
750ml milk

Optional: Add 75g roughly chopped hazelnuts or pecans
Optional: Substitute up to 150ml milk with double cream.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 150C/Gas mark 2.
2. Scatter the oats, nuts (if using), fruit, vanilla, cinnamon and a pinch of sea salt into a baking dish.
3. Add 1 tbsp of the sugar and toss it all together.
4. Pour in the milk (and cream if using) and bake for 45 minutes.
5. Sprinkle with the remaining sugar and put back in the oven for another 15 minutes.
Serve with stewed fruit.

More purple carrots

This weekend, we went purple carrot crazy, and harvested them all before the frosts.

Below is proof - purple carrots on the outside, orange carrots on the inside!







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Mousse au Chocolat

Chocolate Mousse has been on my 'To Cook' list for a long time. I read somewhere that everyone should have a chocolate mousse recipe in their repetoire, but I hadn't had a suitable occasion to make one, and I wasn't about to spend a fortune on good chocolate and ages separating eggs for nothing special.

However, this weekend, we were invited to Sunday lunch with my sister and brother in law, who love good food, and Tim volunteered me to make a dessert. This was my opportunity.

The recipe I followed was very simple, following Raymond Blanc:

Mousse au Chocolat

225g Dark Chocolate
8 egg whites
25g caster sugar


Melt the chocolate over a saucepan of boiling water.

Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks. Fold in the sugar.

Fold a third of the egg whites into the chocolate to loosen the mixture. Then fold the chocolate mixture into the egg whites. Chill for at least 2 hours.

Beware! This mousse is very rich, so you only need a small amount. If I didn't have to transport it, I would have served it in tiny bowls or espresso cups. As we had to take it in the car, I served it in a big white bowl and it was delicious, even if I do have a slight anxiety about eating raw eggs.

Brioche

This was the August Fresh from the Oven challenge. Surprise surprise, I didn't manage to get it done in August. I did, however, manage to get it done in the first week of September, I just haven't had a chance to blog about it until now.

When I was about 8, my mum took a cookery course at the local college. For a few years, every Wednesday night, we would not know whether to look forward to dinner with anticipation or trepidation. Mostly it was good. Some were just weird.

One week, the topic was bread, and mum brought home a hand-made brioche. It was, quite simply, the most delicious bread I had ever had, and although I distinctly remember loving it, I have eaten it only rarely since, and have never made it.

So I was really pleased when brioche was the challenge for August. It's a sweet, egg-rich bread, which is delicious with jam. The recipe is taken from The River Cottage Handbook: Bread by Dan Stevens and I have copied it below.

I confess to using a mixer for the dough , as flour seems to aggravate my eczema, but I have to say, this was the most successful challenge I have done so far. We ate most of one loaf, and finished up the last slices with French Toast this morning. The other loaf went in the freezer - I'm already looking forward to defrosting that one and using it for bread and butter pudding.

Brioche


400g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
5g powdered dried yeast
10g fine sea salt
90ml warm milk
2 tbsp caster sugar
100g butter, softened
4 medium free range eggs, beaten

To Glaze

1 medium free range egg
2 tbsp milk


to knead by hand: mix all the ingredients in a large bowl, and bring it all together to form a dough. Knead for about 10 mins, until smooth and shiny.

Or, to use a food mixer: fit the dough hook and add all the dough ingredients to the mixer bowl. Mix on low speed until combined, and leave to knead for about 10 mins, until smooth and shiny.

Shape the dough into a round, place in a bowl and cover tightly. Leave in the fridge overnight.

The next day, divide the dough in two and form into the shape of your choice. Lightly flour the loaves, lay them on a wooden board or linen cloth and cover with a plastic bag. Leave them somewhere nice and warm to prove until almost doubled in size; this could take 3 or 4 hours, as the dough is cold.

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. For the glaze, beat the egg and milk together. Transfer the risen loaves to a baking tray and brush all over with the glaze. Bake for about 10 mins, then lower the oven setting to 180C/gas mark 4 and bake for a further 30 mins or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

Makes 2 small loaves

River Cottage Handbook No.3 - Bread

A visit to Chatsworth

On Bank Holiday Monday, my friend Jen and I went to visit Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. Apparantly, according to my mother, I have been there before, but personally I think that before the age of about 25, every single country house/National Trust place blends into one, and I can't remember any of it.

The house was beautiful and interesting, with the only real disappointment being that we weren't able to see the kitchens, only to read a tantalising display board about them. But the real fascination lay in the gardens. There were acres and acres of formal planting, sensory gardens, fountains and ponds, and a yew maze, which was mildly entertaining. And then we discovered the Kitchen Garden.

Vegetable and fruit gardening is hard to make interesting and attractive to look at, but at Chatsworth it was fascinating. Not only that, it was also quite encouraging - slugs had been at their swiss chard, for example, but was also a really good example of how a garden should be maintained - green manure was planted where a crop had been harvested, even if it was only a small space.

Another area which was lovely to look at was the cottage garden - literally, a smaller space, bigger than my entire garden, but not much bigger, had been planted as a cottage garden. What was very interesting here was how the colours had been used - with the purple and blue-toned flowers were the purple cabbages, the black kale, and the darker vegetables. The bright chard had been sown alongside marigolds and nasturtiums. Very interesting.

Purple Carrots

They started off as a joke, but who is laughing now?!




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