World Baking Day May 19th 2013

I just learned about World Baking Day on May 19th 2013 recently via Pinterest and am pulling together a little Bake-Off between a few of my friends scattered around the US and in Blighty. We are planning on keeping our recipes a secret until the day of the post - but I will divulge that they will be sweet recipes with one or more unusual ingredients. I haven't decided upon my recipe yet but I do have some possibilities in mind which I have gathered on these boards at Pinterest: 

SWEET CERTAINTIES

CURIOUSLY DELICIOUS

Do you see a recipe there that intrigues you? Please let me know...

Blueberry and Apple Charlotte made with solar baked bread!

The finished Charlotte with apples and blueberries bursting forth.

First I decided to try baking bread in our little solar oven...would it work here in Maine?

As you see below...YES it did...and what a wonderful loaf...I didn't get a brown on it but it was baked through and just delicious.

This bread was baked by the sun in Maine!

I used a faboo recipe from King Arthur Flour (click on the link for the recipe and I recommend doing the by weight version if you have a scale) which is no-knead and so reliably great...even, good crumb and moist without being soggy...just perfect!! Thanks King Arthur!!
If you don't have a homemade loaf then do avail yourself of a loaf with some spine....not one of those marshmallow loaves but one with some body and even perhaps a wholewheat of some sort...now they are stout and hearty and will add more of a certain kind of flavour that
I think would be good.

To begin the Charlotte we need to cook our blueberries and apples...I have to tell you the smell of the fruit and nutmeg simmering was a treat and a very evocative smell...something reminiscent of a Grandma's kitchen smell - which is exactly what James said when he smelled it...LOVELY!!

The Recipe: Blueberry and Apple Charlotte in honour of Fraughan Sunday The Irish celebration this coming Sunday July 31st of the humble blueberry called a Fraughan in Eire!

A Charlotte is another of those very simple, nursery pudding dishes from England which makes something delicious out of very little in the way of ingredients. How many ways can you use bread, butter, sugar and fruit... 

Pre heat your oven to 425F

2 Granny Smith apples roughly chopped

10 oz blueberries (I have to be honest and tell you I couldn't use Maine wild blueberries as they had all sold out from the Coop the day I was doing this so I had to 'cheat' and use frozen organic high bush blueberries which  didn't have the intensity of flavour one gets with wild blueberries...sorry, naughty me!)

1/4 - 1/2 cup/ 2-4ozs sugar depending on your sweet tooth...1/4 is just enough to sweeten...I used 1/4 but wish I has used a little more.

Goodly grating of nutmeg if you are so inclined!

Mix above ingredients in a saucepan and cook til bubbling and most of the liquid

is simmered away...allow to cool somewhat.

Whilst the fruit is cooking you can get on with making the lining for the fruit...from slices of bread.

Depending on the size and shape of your receptacle you will need a good half of a normal sized loaf...sliced medium. I used my trusty 7" diameter nice and deep cake tin (I love that thing...perfect size for nearly all desserts for two people!!)

Coat the inside of the tin you are using with a good veneer of butter and ten dust with granulated sugar quite heavily....then start working on how to line your tin with the melted
butter coated sliced bread.

FIRST: melt 4oz butter in a frying pan...I used a frying pan as it made the next step of dipping and coating the bread shapes with melted butter that much easier. SO dip and coat your slices on both sides before lining the tin with them. I cut 2 semi circles for the top and bottom each and even wide lines for the sides...theoretically your slices should overlap and if there are any gaps you should plug them with leftover bits...but I didn't overlap and as you can see my pudding held together surprisingly well. If you have extra butter left over just slather it around willy nilly on the inside of the bread lining

 

Lined with buttery bread and ready for the fruit

 

Pop your fruit into the cavity and as below top off with your extra semi circles (or circles if your slices are big enough...obviously mine weren't!)

Now pop your little Charlotte into the oven and bake until toasty and brown...now here's the tricky part...keep the oven on...remove the Charlotte from the oven...allow to cool a little, run a knife around the edge of the tin to loosen the little darling....put another baking tray on the top and invert to pop the Charlotte onto the new baking tray - return to the the oven uncovered for a final crisping

for about 10 minutes....et voila!!

You can serve hot, warm or cold with vanilla ice cream, traditional English pouring custard (recipe from England's Martha Stewart - Delia Smith!) or whipped cream. This is a quiet, subtle dish but is sure to delight because of it's unusual manufacture...if you like you can leave out the blueberries and have the much more traditional Apple Charlotte...but it is Fraughan Sunday we are doing this for so stay with the blueberries if you can!!

Check out lots more Frugally Sustainable info at this great blog post by clicking on the name above.

If you are interested in energy producing sculpture
that looks like this:

Energy producing sculpture by James Strickland

....then please consider joining the Facebook page of James Strickland's HELIOCENTRIC SCULPTURE 
and here is his website too:

www.jamesstricklandart.com

Thanks!!

Welsh cakes...again, not cakes....so what are they??

To be honest they are the stuff of legend...honeeest...they are the 'cakes' King Alfred burned, silly man!!!...actually I burned a couple myself so maybe he wasn't so silly!!! They are cakes in the same way a pancake is a cake, to me they taste like fried cookies (biscuits to the Brits reading)...they are sweet and cakey, simple and filling. I can eat them hot with or without butter and find them just as delicious cold when they really do have the sense of cookie about them.

The recipe I used is from an old copy of British Country Living and it has served me very well over the years...it's a great way to start your Thankies Day.

INGREDIENTS:
 

8oz unbleached white flour
 

pinch of salt
 

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg ( I like just nutmeg, a highly underappreciated little spice, but traditionally one would do 1/2 tsp of mixed spice (?), is that allspice? and 1/2 teaspoon of mace)
 

4oz cold grated butter, makes it easier to blend into the flour (again in the recipe it asks for 2oz butter and 2oz of white fat but I don't have any lard and don't like hydrogenated fats...so I went for 4oz butter and they were just fine!)
 

3oz sugar...I use fine brown sugar because I like the flavour of brown but you can use white and King Alfred probably used white sugar...or did he...does anyone know what colour the sugar would have been then...maybe they didn't have white sugar in the 14Century...or whenever he lived, I am making an uneducated guess here!)
 

3oz dried currants
 

1 egg beaten...oops I left this out of the ingredients photo, with a tsp of vanilla extract stirred in

Approx. 1 tablespoon of milk.
 

THE PROCESS:
 

1. Sift flour, salt and spices together in a bowl.
 

2. Rub the grated butter in until it resembles breadcrumbs.
 

3. Stir in the sugar and dried fruit.
 

4. Add the beaten egg with a fork.. and just enough of the milk to form a soft dough...it should be a bit sticky.
 

5. Roll out the dough to 1/4" thickness and cut into rounds, or simple shapes. I got too clever for my clogs and used a star cutter and what with the currants they don't keep their shape well, although I still think they look nicely rustic. You may if you so desire omit the currants as I know so may people out there have fear of dried fruit pertaining to nightmare fruit cakes!...I think the recipe should come out just as well and then you can be more fancy with your cutters!
 

6. Heat up your frying pan, preferably a cast iron one, or griddle if you have one to medium heat. Grease with a little butter...remember they have a lot of butter already in them, and try ONE Welsh Cake to get the feel of the pan and heat, just like you would do with a pancake....the first one of which you usually throw away until your get your hand and the pan 'in'...if you know what I mean.
 

7. Cook the Welsh Cakes in small batches...don't crowd the pan, you want to make it easy to turn them over, and cook a few minutes each side until nicely browned but still soft in the middle.
 

8. Get them out of the pan, cut in half horizontally and put a nice pat of butter in there if you so desire. Maple syrup would be a nice addition if you want to gild the lily and do actually make them for Thankies.
 

9. Repeat process multiple times because once you start eating these little treasures, chances are you won't be able to stop.
 

Off you pop and warm up that big lumbering cast iron frying pan!!! Autumn is just the right time for Welsh Cakes...with, of course, a spot of tea...they do go better with tea than coffee.

Eccles Cakes!!

I grew up eating Eccles cakes which are not actually cakes but more like flattened mincemeat pies with less filling and more pastry...they are indeed a Northern English delicacy named after the town where they were first baked and their flavour is very reminiscent of a British Christmas. If you don't like dried fruit run away now! Traditionally Eccles cakes are made with flaky pastry but I was too lazy to try my hand at that and ended up using a lovely sweet shortcrust pastry recipe I found in one of my trusty old-fashioned English cookbooks. I have found a wonderful resource for conversion charts from UK to US measurements and also a list of Brit cookery names and terms used on the other side of the Pond at Sue Pallett's website, she has kindly allowed me to feature a link to the site on this blog...thank you Sue!

In the first picture above you see my balance weighing scales, without which I wouldn't be able to bake my British recipes, and the indispensible micro-plane that works like a dream for shaving the zest from lemons and oranges.

Here is the recipe:

SWEET SHORTCRUST PASTRY:

8oz unbleached flour

1/2 level teaspoon of salt

5oz butter that has been in the freezer for about 15 minutes

1 egg yolk

1oz fine/castor sugar

3 teaspoons of water

1. Mix the flour and salt in a mixing bowl...(is that why they call it a mixing bowl?)

2. Grate butter into the mix...coat the butter in flour before you grate it to make the process easy, then rub the grated butter into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs...have you guessed by now I do all my baking by hand and don't use machines?...what a pure flower I am.

3. Mix together egg yolk, sugar and water in a seperate bowl...also a mixing bowl perchance?

4. Make a well in the middle of the butter/flour mix, add the liquid mix and blend gently to a firm dough.

As you all know you should keep your hands as cold as possible during the pastry making as pastry dough is very fussy and doesn't like warm hands and will not behave properly if it gets warm in any way!!!

Now the dough is tired and should be left to rest in the fridge until it regains it's strength ready for the next part of the process, a good 20 minutes in the fridge should do the trick.

THE ECCLES FILLING:

1/2lb of currants, sultanas, raisins mixed

2oz finely grated orange and lemon zest (I made the mistake of using chopped peel and my teeth haven't recovered yet, it doesn't soften well in this mix so use the real thing)

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg and allspice together

4oz any kind of sugar

2oz butter

1. Put all the above ingredients into a pan and warm through til butter melts then transfer to a bowl (a mixing bowl?) to cool.

2. Roll out pastry to less than 1/4" thick, I made mine too thick and the cakes were more pastry than filling and it should be the other way around.

3. Cut into 6', no no...6" rounds.

4. Place a good tablespoon of mix in centre, you'll know if you have put too much in 'cos the next step won't work so well...

5. Fold the excess up and over the filling...see above photo...and sqwush the edges til there are no escape holes for the filling to ooze from...this pastry is very malleable so this is easy to do.

6. Turn the 'cake' over and flatten slightly as picture above, slice three lines in the top of each cake to let the steam out whilst cooking or the little beggars will explode...explode may not be the right word but they may split...

7. Wash cakes with a little milk and sprinkle with sugar for fairy dust look.

8. Stick them in a 400F oven for about 20 minutes and Bob's your uncle...you've got yourself some Eccles cakes, also known as Banbury cakes, and Chorley cakes, and Hawkshead cakes and Coventry Godcakes...similar cakes, different shapes impostors all as the Eccles cake is the original and that's that!

As you can see above I made myself a nice spot of Kenyan Bop tea, good and strong, and the Eccles cakes were soon a thing only of pleasant memory.

Happy Baking and let me know how you faired...ta ta!

Cake, finally cake!

Just so you don't think I am making bogus claims on my banner above, here, at last, is a photo of a cake...and one that I baked myself I am proud to say. It was a maple pecan cake and boy was it good (cakes don't last very long 'round these parts). You can also see a hint of English crumbly toffee hiding beneath the buttercream layer in the middle of the cake, a little extra delight that adds a nice toothiness and extra level of sweet flavour. The alchemy of cakes never ceases to amaze me...from creamy batter, which isn't so bad in and of itself, to a spongey crumbly slice of delight. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! ...and then the buttercream......the reason why I make cakes really.

Did you see "Marie Antoinette"?......A beautiful movie, mostly, in my book, because the desserts looked so spectacularly gorgeous. I spent half the night I rented the dvd trying to freeze frame the images of the cakes and confections just so I could drool...there was also one great pair of shoes in there but that's a whole other blog!

Happy baking! There'll be more cakes, and recipes, coming soon so stop by again!