Oh the horror... Turkish Delight you haunt me still!

WOWZER – last night I really upped my game on decimating our kitchen.  I made a batch of Turkish Delight as part of a Christmas present and I’m going to try my very best not to eat my way through them until they’re safely gifted because I can’t quite face making another batch yet! 

This recipe is messy... and when I say messy I mean the entire kitchen looks like it was involved in a Turkish Delight massacre!  

I can only assume when Rachel Allen came up with this recipe she was using a test kitchen with someone else on their hands and knees scraping the dollops of pink gloop out from between the floorboards! 

It uses everything but the kitchen sink in terms of equipment (and this is only because the kitchen sink’s already full of pans soaking previous abortive attempts of Turkish Delight gone bad).  But somehow amidst the swearing and scrubbing, it’s converted me to liking Turkish Delight?!  Who knew?  Apparently it doesn’t always have to taste like cheap soap?

Here are some things I’ve learnt about making Turkish Delight... Aren’t I good to you?  I fell in every one of these pitfalls so you don’t have to!

1.       Line the bottom of the tin with paper as well as greasing it.  Otherwise it won’t budge, not even a bit, let alone come out of the tin in one peice.  No matter how much I begged/bribed/threatened, it was perfectly happy remaining where it was and nothing I was going to do or say was going to change it’s mind!

2.       Don’t use a spring form cake tin.  This results in aforementioned lava hot pink gloop dripping out of the bottom, and between the floorboards... down your leg... all over the kitchen surfaces... etc etc you get the picture!

3.       Try not to pour half a bottle of food colouring into the mixture by mistake – this will overshoot “delicate rose pink” by miles, dumping you firmly into day-glo red.

4.       Remember not to get overly engrossed watching an episode of CSI while simmering sugar syrup for 25 minutes.  An episode of CSI is 1hr long – in hindsight I can see now that this isn’t good maths. 

5.       The same applies to watching your new lovefilm DVD while trying to get a sugar syrup to an exact temperature... it doesn’t work – trust me, watching a sugar thermometer creep up is terminally boring – but take your eye off it for a second and it automatically springs up by at least 20˚C!

6.       Use a heavy based saucepan to reduce hot spots to make burning less likely (see you later attempts 1 and 2)! 

7.       Try not to start eating these until you mean to finish eating them... THEY ARE (suprisingly) VERY MOREISH!!

Grease the cake tin with sunflower oil.  Line the bottom with greaseproof paper and grease the paper.

In a heavy duty pan, bring the sugar and 500ml of water to a rolling boil over a medium heat.  Stir the mixture until the sugar has dissolved.

Reduce the heat and keep the sugar syrup at a low simmer without stirring until it reaches hard-ball stage (125˚C).  This should take about 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the gelatine with the cornflour and cream of tartar in another heavy duty pan.  Gradually whisk in another 500ml water until it’s smooth.  Simmer over a medium heat for approximately 3-5 minutes whisking CONSTANTLY to prevent lumps.  It is ready once it starts to look suspiciously like wallpaper paste.  Remove it from the heat.

Once the sugar syrup reaches the hard-ball stage, immediately remove from the heat and whisk in the lemon juice.  Next whisk the sugar syrup into the cornflour mixture.

Place the combined mixture over a low heat and simmer gently until it reaches the thread stage (110˚C).  Stir frequently to prevent sticking or burning.  It should take approximately 1hr.

As soon as the mixture reaches 110˚C (and has turned a deep golden colour), add the rosewater and food colouring and stir until fully incorporated.

Pour into the prepared tin and leave overnight in the fridge to firm up.

Dust a work surface with copious amounts of icing sugar.  Turn the Turkish Delight out onto the icing sugar and chop it into squares with an oiled knife.  Dust more icing sugar over the top and then roll each square to ensure it has a hefty coating.  This will ensure it stores for longer without sticking together and will dust off so there's no such thing as too much!

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 month (apparently)

Turkish Delight (makes approximately 48 pieces):

850g caster sugar

21g gelatine powder

125g cornflour

1tsp cream of tartar

2tbsp lemon juice

2tsp rosewater

A few drops of red food colouring

Icing sugar, to dust

Sunflower oil, for greasing the tin

8” square non-stick cake tin

Ginger-Spiced Upside-Down Cake

It’s half four in the afternoon and 100% black as pitch outside... it’s been raining and grey and that damp cold which really gets into your bones...  The perfect excuse to consume your own body weight in food I hear you say?  Exactly what I was thinking!

Looks like instead of heading to the climbing wall I’ll be cycling home as fast as possible, then attacking a small country's allocation of calories for dinner, followed by diving under a blanket and working through my food coma with some horrifically mind-numbing TV...

I found this recipe for a ginger-spiced upside-down cake a few weeks ago.  It's super moist with the perfect amount of spice for grey-day grumpiness... Now I’m thinking about it I might have to go and make another one this evening to double check that it really is as good as I remember! 

PLEASE NOTE: THIS RECIPE HAS NOW BEEN IDIOT-PROOFED!  My Dad tried making this last night (with very bizarre results - he's INCREDIBLY literal bless him) I've had to make a couple of tweaks to the way I've written the recipe to prevent anyone else from falling into the same (very unlikely) traps!  :o)

Preheat the oven to 160˚C. Grease and line the base (and up to approximately 1" up the sides) of a 9" spring-form cake tin.

Melt 25g of butter with ½ cup of the sugar and the cinnamon.  Pour over the base of the cake tin.  Lay the fruit over the mixture, trying to cover the entire base without leaving gaps.  Should you feel particularly artistic feel free to make pretty concentric circles...

Cream together 225g butter with ¾ cup of the sugar until pale and smooth.  Add the ginger and mix in.  Add the eggs one at a time fully mixing each in before adding the next.  Pour in the molasses/honey/golden syrup and mix. 

Whisk together the dry ingredients.

Alternate between adding small quantities of dry ingredients and buttermilk.  Mix until just incorporated.  Pour mixture over the fruit and bake in the oven for 1 and ¾ hours.

Cool the cake in the pan for 10 minutes then invert over a serving plate and release the sides of the cake tin.  Cool for at least another half hour before eating.

Ginger-Spiced Upside-Down Cake:

250g butter, softened
1¼ cups light brown sugar
4-5 medium to large ripe pears or apples, peeled, cored, and sliced thinly
2 tbsp ginger, grated

1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
3 large eggs

²/₃ cup molasses/honey/golden syrup
3 cups plain flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
1 ½ cups buttermilk

MUST... NOT... THINK... ABOUT... MOUNTAINS...

(Sigh...) in fact this week’s been a bit of a (double sigh...)!  The exodus out to the mountains started early this year,  dumping me into daydreams of the chalet goodlife I’m missing out on once again.  Five months of snowboarding and cooking... (big, fat, stinky, miserable sighhhhhhhhh!!!!)

Two friends left from mine on Sunday afternoon.  They were full of excitement, a newly broken wrist and more luggage than should realistically have a) been owned by two boys and b) fitted in the car. I (on the other hand) was just full of envy.  

I’m not quite sure how I mustered the willpower not to jump on the bonnet of the departing car with a melodramatic “taaaaake meeeee with youuu...” I’m assuming the birthday hangover must have had something to do with it.

The silver lining in my mid-November grot is the unbearably cute Fraser.  If I was in France for the next five months I’d miss out on a whole heap of quality Fraser-time! 

I can always run off to do more seasons once he’s grown out of the cute stage... although I could be waiting a while!  :o)

I made myself these little beauties last week in an attempt to bribe my workmates out of “zombie attacking” me on my birthday.  It's the usual office affair involving silently looming up behind the birthday victim in search of embarrassment...  Cookies were the perfect distraction!

Be warned, they don’t ever seem to become sickly – even after you eat an entire plateful...  

Brown the butter slowly over a medium heat.  It is sufficiently browned as soon as it starts to smell nutty and turns golden brown.  To prevent it from browning further and tasting burnt decant into a mixing bowl as soon as it’s ready.  Allow to cool for at least half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 175˚C.  Beat together the sugars, egg and yolk until light and creamy (most of the sugar should have dissolved).  Add the cooled butter, and beat for a further two minutes.

Sieve the dry ingredients in and mix until just incorporated.  Stir through the chocolate.

Roll large tablespoonfuls of the mixture into balls, space well apart on lined baking sheets and sprinkle with a small amount of Maldon salt.

Bake 12-14 minutes until the edges turn golden brown.  Rest the cookies for three minutes on the baking sheets then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

My birthday cookies were not quite as pretty as the photography from the originals (to be expected...) but aesthetics aside they made a darned good bribe! 

Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes approx. 2 dozen):

150g butter

150g dark chocolate, cut into large chunks

150g dark Muscovado sugar

50g white sugar

1 egg + 1 egg yolk

225g strong white flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp fine salt

Maldon sea salt for sprinkling over the top

The wonder cake which can cure all ills...

Surprisingly, there are few things in this world which are capable of riling me.  I appear to have used up my lifetime's supply of rage during my teenage years when absolutely EVERYTHING made me angry - going to school, having to cope with the horror of talking to my family,  waking up in the morning... you name it - I rolled my eyes and muttered about it.

At the grand old age of 31 (as of tomorrow, happy birthday me!) I'm a lot calmer.  But I've recently found the one thing (other than hunger) which is capable of balling up my zen and lobbing it out of the window: the wretched bike shed at work. 

It’s the stuff of Dante’s most hellish nightmares - I swear!  How infuriating can an area for storing your bike get I hear you ask?  VERY!!! 

Whichever fool built ours firstly made it impossible to open – they put the sensor on backwards so the only people able to gain entrance are professional safecrackers.  Then once you FINALLY manage to open the door (having generated a long queue of irritable colleagues) you have to try and wedge your bike through a door which isn’t even as wide as your bike!?  How could that not have been the single most important criteria for making said door?! 

Every! single! day! (Twice!!) I have to perform the bike shoe shuffle: left a bit... clang... forward a bit... clang...right a bit...ouch, there’s the peddle in the calf... back out... clang, clang... pick it up... run full pelt at the door, bike in hand hoping for the best... and... CLANNNGGGGGG - whoops there goes the handlebars, didn’t need them anyway... YES me and my newly crippled bike are OUT!! 

No wonder I get home every day craving some form of comfort food (read: cake).  I spent the first week in the new building alternatively swearing/stamping/threatening/reasoning/ranting even giggling hysterically trying to get through the hellish portal but to no avail – with a choice of regressing to teen angst or feeding the rage into submission guess which won out?  Cake is the only answer! 

I made this little beauty last week - I couldn’t help it!  I saw the recipe when it was posted on 101 cookbooks and gluttony took over.  This amount of mixture makes two small or one large cake (I made two - one of which was polished off still hot from the oven as an alternative lunch).  Chocolaty banana cake with lemon glaze?...ahhhhh – ten deep breaths and relax!!

Preheat the oven to 180˚C.  Grease and flour your cake tin of choice.

Sift together the flours, 125g muscovado sugar, bicarbonate of soda, and salt. Add the chocolate and mix.

In a separate bowl, mix together the olive oil, eggs, banana, yogurt, and vanilla. Fold together the wet and dry ingredients until just mixed.  Scrape the mixture into the tin and bake for approximately 50 minutes (or until golden brown).

Cool the cake in the tin on a wire rack for 10 minutes.  Finish cooling the cake by removing from the tin and leaving to cool completely on the wire rack.

Make the glaze: Sift 85g of muscovado sugar and then whisk together with the icing sugar and lemon juice until smooth.  Drizzle/Spread over the cake once it has cooled completely.

Chocolatey Banana cake with lemon glaze:

125g plain flour
140g wholewheat flour
210g dark muscovado sugar (split – 125g for the cake and 85g for the glaze)
3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
115g dark chocolate, cut to chunks
80ml extra-virgin olive oil
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
340g ripe bananas, mashed
60ml plain, full-fat yogurt
1tsp lemon zest, grated
1tsp vanilla extract
55g icing sugar
4 tsp lemon juice

Twins, Hedgehogs and Lemon Curd Blondies...

So I haven’t been at home much recently for cooking or writing purposes.  Most recently - visiting a friend in Oxfordshire...

Yesterday, we were on an autumnal walk, picking up dry leaves for her 19 month old twin boys to scrunch. 

The boys were peering out of their double buggy and I was full of the joys of autumn when in with the leaves (and a mini “I’m almost two” tantrum-ette) we found a hedgehog. 

Very over excited we were immediately overcome with the warm and fuzzies and were mid-way through planning a rescue mission thanks to the local hedgehog hospital within walking distance… 

Then the practicalities waded in - how the hell do you even go about picking one up?  And aren’t they supposed to be flea-ridden and rabid?  And finally, sadly - Ummm… is it actually even alive?!  Yes, after closer scrutiny we discovered we had very almost rescued a (very dead it turns out) hedgehog…  Not the idealistic autumnal day planned but never mind! 

Anyway – on a happier and more appetizing note, my leftover lemon curd...  I decided that swirling it through an oatmeal blondie was the way to go.  The recipe could do with a bit of tweaking but turned out remarkably well considering it was a first attempt.  The creamy oats and tangy lemon is a winner in my book!

Preheat oven to 180°C.  Grease and line your baking tin (the one I used was approximately 8x15”.

Cream together the sugars with the butter then add the eggs and mix.

Grad add the flour, raising agents, salt and 1 ½ cups of the oats and mix.  Swirl through half the lemon curd and spoon into the prepared tin.  Smooth the top of the mixture and dollop over the rest of the lemon curd. 

Sprinkle with the remaining ½ cup of oats and bake approximately 30 minutes until golden brown (check with a skewer after 25 minutes to gauge how fast it’s cooking – you want it to have a fudgey texture like a brownie).

Cool the blondie in the tin for another half hour then cool it the rest of the way on a wire rack.  Cut into small squares and eat!

Oatmeal and Lemon Curd Blondies: (fills 8x15” tin)

1 cup white sugar

1 cup demerera sugar

125g butter, softened

2 eggs

2 cups self-raising flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp salt

2 cups porridge oats

5tbsp lemon curd

Surprise! He’s early...

The countdown is over... Welcome to the world Fraser Duncan! 

My brand spanking new nephew was born Friday morning – and I’m already utterly besotted with him: he’s without doubt the smallest yet most entertaining person I’ve ever met! 

I think he looks like my sister-in-law, she thinks he looks like my brother, and my brother thinks he looks like me... only one thing’s for certain – he's definately got my dad’s hairline!

Looking forward to the upcoming innumerable doting auntie moments...

all change on the good ship Duncan...

This week has been a week of change.  Goodbye to: having a boyfriend, working in Shoreditch, cycling to work on a death trap and being the youngest in the family...  Hello to: being single again, working in Clarkenwell, cycling to work on a bike with actual working brakes, and my sister-in-law’s due date (one week today!)! 

In the midst of all this change I had the family over for a very relaxed afternoon tea on Sunday... one of the stars of the show (in comparison say, to the overly “caramelised” fruit scones) was the lemon curd.  A delicious way of disguising the slightly overcooked scones if ever I found one!  It was so good it was also sandwiched with some sweetened mascarpone between lavender shortbreads, slathered on toast and dolloped on sticky gingerbread... a bit of an all-rounder hero really!

Place the lemon juice, zest, sugar and butter in a bowl over simmering water.  Stir this until the butter has melted.

Beat together the eggs and the extra yolk and stir into the bain marie.  Cook stirring regularly for 10 minutes until thick.

Remove from the heat and stir until it is cool.  Pour into sterilised jars and seal.

It will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Lemon Curd: (makes 2 small jars)

4 unwaxed lemons, zest and juice
200g sugar
100g butter, cut to cubes
3 eggs and 1 egg yolk

Food Blogging Makes you Fat: Chocolate-Dipped Florentines

It’s a fact – I’ve never consumed so much cake in my life!  I’m having it for breakfast, 11ses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, dessert, midnight snacks… FATTTYYYYYYYY!  I've started using this blog as an excuse to bake morning, noon and night... I've always been a big eater but even I'm getting slightly conserned!  This much sugar and butter every day could quite possibly turn me into the world's first human bouncy castle...

In an attempt to not end up the size of a bus by my 31^st birthday I’ve come to the simple conclusion that I’m going to try and restrict myself (good luck with that one!) .  Half of my posts (she optimistically writes) are going to hopefully start to be at least distant cousins to healthier food… Or perhaps I’ll have to put myself on an “only baking when it’s for someone else” ban… Or maybe just resign myself to biting the bullet and going on that moo moo shopping spree...

So, I've decided to make freezable Christmas presents for the next few weeks in an attempt to give my body a bit of a break.  First up: Chocolate-Dipped Florentines.  Luckily this post isn’t going to ruin anyone’s Christmas morning surprise: Mum requested these pretty much as soon as she’d polished off last year’s batch.  This time the recipe is one of David Lebovitz’s – the first of his I’ve tried and it’s a winner.

These biscuits (yes I know – not exactly healthy but they ARE for someone else) are delicious – I managed to only “test” one… well two… ok THREE but  in my defense you have to make sure when you’re gifting the end product!  (Mum see what sacrifices I make for you!?)

Preheat the oven to 150˚C.  Grease and line your baking trays.

In a bowl mix together all of the ingredients (apart from the chocolate).  Fill a small bowl with cold water. 

Dip your hands in the water then pick up a tablespoon sized portion and heap it on the prepared baking tray.  Repeat with the rest of the mixture. 

Once you’ve used it all up, dip the fork in the water between flattening each biscuit as much as possible while avoiding gaps in the mixture and trying to keep an even shape. 

Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.  Cool slightly on the tray before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling completely. 

Melt the chocolate and brush the base of each biscuit in a thin layer.  Leave in the fridge until set and then store in an airtight container at room temperature.  Or as I’ve done, freeze as a very early start on Christmas baking!

David Lebovitz's Chocolate-Dipped Florentines: (makes 20-25)

1 large egg white, at room temperature
50g icing sugar
130g blanched sliced almonds
a good pinch of flaky sea salt
grated zest of half an orange, preferably unsprayed

100g dark chocolate, melted

Indian Summer, too much Sangria and Squidgy Lemon Cake...

God bless Indian summers!  I spent pretty much the entire weekend on a friend’s balcony basking in the sun.  We were lined up like sardines, sun loungers and hammocks filling every available space. 

 An epic barbeque and endless jugs of sangria and pimms mixed with good friends and lots of sun – it was like a mini-holiday!  Sigh – Monday morning blues are here to stay...

In an attempt to inject some much needed sugar into the morning after the night before I made this squidgy lemon cake yesterday – perfection!  It was dense, intensely lemony, with a brilliant yellowy colour, but sadly it was as ugly as sin!  I have to admit the ugly part was completely my fault.  I should know by now not to attempt baking on a hangover... 

My poor creation was unceremoniously dumped out of it’s tin in several pieces and then aggressively stuck back together with lumpy lemony icing... never-the-less, presentation and effort aside it was still delicious and hoovered up in minutes. 

This recipe was remarkably similar to another cake I baked recently... a cake which is terrifyingly easy to make and would have been the perfect choice when feeling decidedly "delicate"!  A Lemon Polenta Cake which I found on the back of an Imbhams Farm Granary Polenta Flour bag. 

Luckily, having two favourite lemon cake recipes now will mean a series of taste tests... Looks like I’ll be needing to join a gym this autumn!

Preheat the oven to 160˚C and line a loaf tin with baking parchment.

Blend all the ingredients (except the blueberries) in a food processor until smooth.  Stir through the berries and spoon into the prepared tin.

Bake for 50-55 minutes, then leave the cake in the tin until cool.

Lemon Polenta Cake: (makes 1 loaf)

115g polenta flour

175g unsalted butter, softened

225g brown sugar

200g ground almonds

3 large eggs

3 lemons, zested

1 ½ lemons, juice

1tsp baking powder

Blueberries to taste