...eating her curds...

Was the wait just too hard to bear?  Did you cope?  I know, I know...not quite a True Blood-holding-your-breath style cliffhanger but you never know.  Maybe a broken tart crust leaves your heart pounding?

So where were we? 

I went to bed that night happy with my 6 pie crusts and awoke thinking that the pie crusts seemed incredibly fragile.  I therefore decided to leave them out to harden up a little (i.e. go a little stale).  It just seemed like the right thing to do. 

As I was getting ready to leave for work I was enjoying listening to the conversation between hubby and Pose.  They were discussing the pie crusts and being very cute.  And then I heard the words that never precede good news..."oops".  I peaked my head around the corner to be greeted with pie crust carnage.  ANOTHER TART WAS BROKEN.  I asked why and was given my husband's cute-I'm-trying-to-get-out-of-jail-free-smile (I got no answer to the "why?" but have assumed he was trying to break a little bit off just to get a taste and well, you know the rest).  I just put my face in my hands and explained that I was already down 2 and this now put me in negative equity.  He offered to make more and I really had no choice so let him get on with it, grudgingly thanking him.

Evidently, he is not a pastry chef (but I love that he offered to try to fix it).

Sunday morning rolled around and I was at my mother's bright and early preparing the Mothering Sunday lunch of Coq au Vin (containing 1 entire bottle of very nice red plonk - my father (who does a great hangover fry-up but isn't exactly renowned for his culinary skills) tried to stop me putting in the 725ml called for by the recipe and claimed my mother only puts about a cup in.  I said the recipe I was using was HER recipe given to me about 9yrs ago.  He said ok, but that a bottle is 750mls so I should just pour the lot in...um, ok dad...).  Once that was all settled into the slow cooker I set my mind to completing the LMP (remember Lemon Meringue Pie*).  So next step, lemon curd (see what I did there?  Little Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet eating her curds...?  No...?  Killjoy).

The recipe - LMP courtesy of the New York Times Cook Book (1961 edition!)

Part 2, the lemon curd

1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup flour (I used plain)
3 tbsp cornstarch (I used cornflour - I'm not sure if there's a difference?)
2 cups water
3 eggs, separated (save the whites for the meringue topping)
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup lemon juice (this is roughly the juice of 1 lemon)
grated rind of 1 lemon

1. Combine the sugar, salt, flour and cornstarch and gradually stir in the water.  Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened and smooth. 

I should point out here that the recipe isn't particularly detailed on how to "cook" so I basically put the ingredients in a saucepan over a low heat and stirred using a whisk.  You need to be patient though, it takes its time thickening.

2. Gradually stir hot mixture into beaten egg yolks, return to low heat and cook, stirring, two minutes.  Stir in butter, lemon juice and rind and cool slightly.  Pour into baked pastry shell and cool.

Again, not much detail.  Personally after step 1 I put the pan to one side to cool (away from the heat) and then set to beating the yolks, zesting and juicing the lemon.  By the time you are finished (unless you are "Supercook" - faster than a speeding Kitchenaid!!) the hot mixture should be about cool enough to mix in the cold mixture.  Just be wary.  I remember an episode of Masterchef The Professionals where they set the "professionals" the task of making lemon curd and the majority of them created lemony scrambled eggs.  I succeeded where they failed - hurrah!!

Once the mixture begins to cool it goes quite gloopy so you will need to give it a quick whisk.  I then spooned the curd into the pie crusts (and some additional crusts I had quickly made with some ready-to-roll pastry my mum had in the fridge) and returned to the Coq au Vin whilst the pie's cooled.

Of course you could stop here and let them set to have lemon tart instead.  My family took some of the pastry off-cuts and dipped it into the remaining lemon curd as a sort of appetiser (I guess?) and seemed very taken with the curd.  It even got my Nan's seal of approval.  Although it didn't help with her regular afternoon bout of heartburn...

You might notice this post's distinctive lack of pictures.  I take all my baking pictures on my iPhone (its just more handy than my good camera to be honest) and it just so happened that this particular Sunday my mother, my brother and I all had dead iPhones.  It being Mother's Day (i) I had to wait for my mother to get up to find the charger, and (ii) ranking in order of seniority (read "age" but shhh don't tell her I said that), I had to wait for my mother to charge her iPhone.  You'll have to wait for the next post to see pictures.  

...to be continued**...

* My nurse friend advises me that LMP stands for something entirely different and not dinner-time-talk.  Oops.

** Oooh another cliffhanger!! Well I did say it would be a saga.

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet...

I'm pretty sure that the curds and whey Little Miss Muffet was eating had something to do with cheese and not lemon curd but hey...lets talk tuffets.

Finally I got around to blogging about the last piece of the Mother's Day afternoon tea puzzle*.  What has this got to do with Little Miss Muffet or curds and whey?  Well, my mother's favourite dessert is Lemon Meringue Pie (at least I think it is, she always seems to have a Sara Lee one in the freezer) so I decided to attempt a Lemon Meringue Pie, well not one, 8 Lemon Meringue Pies....in miniature of course!  I have never made a Lemon Meringue Pie (seriously I can't be bothered to type that each time so lets go with "LMP" from now on) before as I'm not a massive fan of it, or meringue (I really don't - its like the hubby's weird cake-phobia - well not that weird, that really is bizarre.  Worst of all it seems to be genetic and my daughter has also started rejecting cake!  What is the world coming to when a 2yr old doesn't like cake!?!?).

Anyway, moving swiftly on...

So yes, I had never made an LMP before.  I figured that with a classic recipe like this you really need to go back to an old recipe.  Now my mother was friends with a lovely loud Southern gal' who had a great passion for cookery and had amassed a large collection of cook books.  Sadly she passed away and the cook books needed a new home.  A large number of her books were American cuisine and given that at this point in time I was dating hubby my mother thought the best home for these books would be with me.  One of my favourite of these books is a real tome and according to the inside covers was published back in 1961.  I went straight to this book to find an LMP recipe and there it was.  Oh, and its The New York Times Cook Book so I figured it must be a decent recipe.  I wasn't wrong.

The recipe - LMP courtesy of the New York Times Cook Book (1961 edition!)

Part 1, the crust
I decided to go with a sweet pie pastry recipe (the book also gives other crust recipes) as follows:

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour (I used plain)
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons sugar (I used caster)
1 cup butter (at room temperature)
Grated rind of 1 lemon
Pinch of salt

1. Sift the flour into a mixing bowl.  Make a well in the centre and add the remaining ingredients.

2. Mix the centre ingredients with the fingers of one hand or a pastry blender until blended.  Quickly work in the flour.  Add a small amount of ice water if necessary to moisten the dough so it can be gathered into a ball.



3. Wrap the dough in waxed paper (I'll admit it, I'm lazy and just put it in the fridge in the mixing bowl) and chill one hour.  Roll out the pastry, fit it into the pans (the recipe makes either 6 tart shells or 2 9-inch pie shells, I made slightly smaller ones to fit in a cupcake tray) and bake on the bottom shelf of a preheated hot oven (450F) until brown, about 15mins (just watch them!!).

Now you might notice that there are 8 crusts in the first picture and only 6 in the second picture.  Well it seems that the crusts had their own opinion on LMPs (or perhaps just shared mine) and took it all a bit personally.  They couldn't quite bear it anymore and took dramatic action:

I may have lost 2 of my "tuffets" (I seriously don't know what a tuffet is but it works so lets just go with it) but figured that although there were 8 people eating (i) I'm not a fan so could go without; and (ii) my 2 year old really doesn't NEED dessert. I was still in the game...

...to be continued**.....

* I was baking on Sunday (Hot Cross Buns! Post coming soon...) so fully intended to sit down last night and write this up. Alas, my laptop seemed to be hating on me (I'm so down with the kids) and then I got side tracked by the brand spanking new episode of Mad Men (hurrah!!).

** Oooh baking cliffhanger, exciting times....I was recounting the tale of the LMP to a friend the other night and she described it as a saga, so lets just go with that too.  A lickle experiment.

Oh, what's occurring??

So, I had made little scones for the afternoon tea.  What next?  Well, my mother loves Welsh Cakes and my nan is Welsh (shhhhh, don't tell anyone....)* so I decided to make Welsh Cakes...bitesize of course.

I looked in my recipe books and didn't have any recipes for Welsh Cakes so I went online.  I found a couple of recipes but a lot were from US websites and were far too OTT (spices, zests...wooah there Nelly!  This is meant to be a simple recipe!).  I got caught between a James Martin recipe on the BBC Food website and the recipe I went with below (I figured it was from the people who make the flour to go into the cakes so they should know what they're doing!).  The recipe is in italics.

The recipe - Welsh Cakes courtesy of McDougalls

225g McDougalls Self Raising Flour (I did not use McDougalls, I used whatever was in my flour jar)

Pinch salt
100g unsalted butter
50g caster sugar
50g currants
1 medium egg
2 tbsp milk

Like the scones, I made these by hand as they mixed better than with Berta.

1. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl.

2. Rub in the butter (now I may have run out of butter so I may have substituted 20g of butter with 20g shortening, but I couldn't possibly say) until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs (literally pick the mix up in between your hands and rub your hands together).

3. Stir in the sugar and currants.

4. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and add egg and milk.

5. Using a palette knife, bring ingredients together to form a stiff dough.

6. Flour work surface and roll dough out to about 5mm in thickness. Using a fluted cutter, cut into rounds, re-rolling the trimmings (again, I don't have any cutters - actually NOW I do since my MiL sent us some Easter cutters, but I didn't on Monday - so out came my trusty shot glass).

7. Cook on a moderately hot, lightly greased griddle or heavy, flat bottomed frying pan for about 3-4 minutes each side until golden (I baked mine on a tray at 200C for about 5 mins as I had further plans for my little Welsh Cakes).

8. Once ready I took 8 of the Welsh Cakes, sprinkled them with caster sugar, put them in an airtight container and then put them in the freezer.  As with the scones, I decided to freeze them in advance of the weekend to keep them fresh.  I let the remaining Welsh Cakes cool a little but whilst still warm, I sprinkled them with caster sugar (I figured the heat would help the sugar stick to them) and popped them in an airtight container.

9. What about the other 8 then?  Well I let them defrost overnight again and then right before serving on Mother's Day I spread butter all over a frying pan and cooked them for a couple of minutes on either side.  I then sprinkled MORE sugar all over them and served.

Both hubster and my little one enjoyed the Welsh Cakes - she announced "mmm tastes good" and renamed them "sparkly cookies". I also took quite a few into the office, together with a tub of clotted cream.  Given there are only 7 people in my team, 1 was out and another is on a diet, the Welsh Cakes (with assistance from the cream) disappeared pretty quickly.  Much to my personal satisfaction!

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the individual finished Welsh Cakes but you will see a picture soon...

* My nan is Welsh but moved to England with her family when she was around 10yrs old.  She doesn't have an accent but you can tell she's Welsh - she's always singing or crying (or both).  Strangely enough though, her older brother (who moved to England at the same time) maintained a Welsh accent until he passed away.  I never understood that.

I'm a GIANT

I've always been obsessed with things that aren't the "right" size be it miniature things (like mini-jaffa-cakes where I can pretend I'm a giant) or things on the enormo scale (so mancakes and fishbowl cocktails).  As a kid I remember watching "The Borrowers" and "Willy Wonker and the Chocolate Factory" (the original of course! Can you imagine it...going into that room with the chocolate river, the giant lollipops, the edible tea cups, the enormous gummy bears....) and obsessing over the possibilities of chocolate chips the size of my head.  Seriously, as a kid this was my idea of heaven but then I was a sweetie fiend.  My mum used to find sweet wrappers stuffed in my Popple whilst I proclaimed my innocence and blamed Teddy Ruxbin. 

This past Sunday was Mothering Sunday in the UK so my sibs (and my Pa) and I had the fateful discussion about what to do for Ma.  Every time we've attempted to go out for Mothers Day it has always been tricky, usually because we have to cater to my Nan's very strange foodisms and it stresses my Mum out (Nan refuses to eat butter (but carries her own butter knife in her purse)* or anything she deems as fat but will quite happily tuck into any sort of cake and will eat cream on its own).  Not to mention I'm a football widow on Sunday anyway and the thought of dealing with Nan, my Mum's angst and my Tasmanian devil is enough to make me run for the hills.  I therefore put the kibosh on it straightaway and suggested we cook at home and I'd also bake.  Job done.  And then true to form I went a step ahead and suggested we also do afternoon tea...so I've roped myself into making little cakes too.  Why do I always get so ahead of myself and over commit???

No afternoon tea would be complete without scones.  In fact, I'd personally feel cheated without them!  So last Sunday the first thing I set about making was the scones.  Not just any scones though.  We were going to be eating a few cakes and since I do love things in miniature, I made bite size scones. 

Again, I'm too lazy to type the recipe up so the recipe is below.  I'm not sure where its from, I know its from one of my mum's old tomes and I have a feeling its a Delia but I'm just not sure.

I made the recipe as directed although I have to say the dough was pretty sticky so I ended up adding more flour.  Hubby claimed this made the resulting scones more savoury and like American style biscuits but my family said they enjoyed them.  Perhaps this is the difference between the English and American palate (listen to me sounding all knowledgeable!).

I don't have any cutters so I used a shot glass
(I have no cookie or cake cutters but I have a ton of shot glasses - standard)

Serve warm and fill with jam and clotted cream!

I took 8 of the little scones, placed them into an airtight container and put them in the freezer for Sunday.  I then simply let them defrost for 24hrs and served them up with the afternoon tea (see later posts).  They fared pretty well in the freezer so look like a good recipe to make ahead of time if need be.

I also did a little taste testing and personally, I thought they were nom.


* I am not even joking.  She got flagged at Heathrow airport for carrying a knife - on her way to my wedding - in the USA - post 9.11.01 - and then had her knives (yes PLURAL butter knives, they found another one in her HANDBAG) confiscated.  Don't even try to understand my Nan. Tip.Of.The.Iceberg.

Carrot juice tastes like evil

Its only since I became an "adult" (and I use that term with not just a grain of salt, but a ruddy great bucket of it) that I began to like carrot cake.  Actually it could have just been that the thought of putting carrot...in a...cake (!?) sent me into a great sadness ("why god why!?!?").  I mean vegetables...in a cake....that's just wrong on all levels.

Then there's the carrot factor.  A couple of weeks ago I was in Pret grabbing breakfast and saw a bottle of carrot juice.  It said "grab me" (it literally said "grab me" on the bottle) so I thought "sure, what the hell".  I mean how bad could it be?  My friend K is into juicing (vegetables not just fruit) and really seems to like her concoctions plus its meant to be super healthy.  I was also trying to be on a new year's health kick, the carrot juice just seemed to come along at the right time.

Sure.

I took a sip of the carrot juice and instantly regretted it.  It tasted like vomit.  Actually carroty vom.  I told myself off, I mean I'm an adult right?  It really can't be that bad, I'm sure I'll get used to it.  So I took another sip.  Still vom.  Another sip?  Yep, still carroty vom.  I gave up.  Carrot juice tastes evil.  I-kid-you-not.  It tastes like the carrot found out about the carrot juicing, topped itself then rotted in the bottle for a year.  I spent the rest of the day belching carrot juice and feeling like I would actually vom carrot juice.  It was vile.  Morning sickness was more fun.

Anyway I wasn't a fan of carrot cake until recently.  Now I realise that it doesn't taste vegetable-y (yes, that's a word, I just wrote it and spell check didn't correct it) or carroty vom, it actually tastes quite pleasant.

My NCT group were having a little meet up and I offered to bake (I'll take any excuse) and figured carrot cake would be a good option.  Now when I was pregnant and suffering from delusions of wanting to be the greatest-mummy-baker but being paranoid of making my unborn child fat, I bought the book Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood.  Sounds good right?  Well there's a catch.  All of the recipes try to sneak in vegetables and contain very little fat.  Sounds like I'm talking sh*t?  To my constant surprise the recipes are actually pretty delish (I've secretly served the title chocolate cake (that contains aubergine, yes A.U.B.E.R.G.I.N.E.) to dinner guests and they've been very complimentary (and I don't think they were just being polite).  The recipes also seem to be largely gluten free.  So...

The recipe - Carrot Cake

I'm too lazy to type this up!

Basically follow the recipe!  Well, unless you're me.  I misread how much lime to use in the icing and instead put in the zest and juice of 1 whole lime (not just half the zest and 2tsp of the juice).  That being said everyone said they really enjoyed the zingy icing.

The recipe doesn't go into any detail on how to go about icing the cake so I've put some pictures below:

1. Put a big dollop of icing in the centre of the base cake (my base cake was a little bigger than the top cake - I realised all too late that none of my 3 loose bottom tins are the same size!).

2. Using a palette knife, spread the icing out across the base.

3. Carefully place the top cake onto the bottom cake and repeat steps 1 and 2 for the top cake.

4. Make some little carrots!!  Using some fondant icing, mix a little water, a couple of drops of red food colouring and a lot of drops of yellow food colouring (alternatively just use orange food colouring!!) and mix into a pliable dough.  Sprinkle some icing sugar onto a board and pop the icing ball onto the board.

5. Now I tried 2 different ways to make the carrot decorations.  The first way I split the dough into 4 portions and then tried to shape the dough into carrot shapes.  This didn't seem to work too well and in fact looked like I was trying to replicate an earlier creation.  I wasn't thrilled with the results of the second way but I needed to leave for the meet-up so the second way was the only way...I started by flattening the ball with the palm of my hand.

6.  Using a knife cut 2 eye shapes out of the icing and cut each of the eye shapes in half again.

7. Taking the knife, make several horizontal gashes across the surface of the "carrots".

8. Next I added a ton of green food colouring to the left over orange icing (yes I could have started again but I HATE waste) and flatten the icing out.  Then cut the icing into thin strips.

9. Cut the long green strips in half and layer them on the cake like the roots of the carrot and place the carrot gently overlapping the ends.

10. Continue to do the same for the other 3 carrots.

The cake tasted really good, even if I do say so myself.  My icing carrots were a bit of a disappointment though.  The icing wouldn't set so the carrots got a little limp.  I'm not having much luck with fondant icing!

All that aside, the cake went down a treat at the meet-up and I was able to take some leftovers to the folks (they had offered to babysit for us that night and I felt I should take some cake by way of a thank you).  In fact, my father insisted I left him the last of the cake.  Sounds like a success to me.