Baking Archives - Page 13 of 14 - Retro Food For Modern Times

Category: Baking

24
Jan
2014

Watch Me Pull a Magic Cake Out Of My Hat

categories: Cake

Anyone else out there remember Saturday morning cartoons and the gang from Rocky and Bullwinkle?

One of the running gags was that Bullwinkle was forever trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat…

Rocky & Bullwinkle

And failing miserably…

Rocky & Bullwinkle Magic Trick

Maybe Rocky’s disdain was hardwired into me at an early age as I have never been a fan of magic tricks…although, having just said I really liked the movie The Prestige. Then again, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla? What’s not to like?

And that dorky kid from Harry Potter growing up to be handsome as hell?

Now that’s the kind of magic I can get behind.

But in general, my David Copperfield tends to be more of the Dickens rather than the disappearing Statue of Liberty variety.

However, recently a thing called the Magic Cake has been haunting my Pinterest feed and, it had me intrigued. The blurb promised that the Magic Cake would “come out of the oven with three distinct layers…a dense layer on bottom, custard-like layer in the middle, and a fluffy cake layer on top”.

WTF? No…this can’t possibly work.

And yet…

There are photos…

And Lemon Delicious Pudding somehow manages to make itself into awesome pudding and sauce…so there is some sort of precedent.

But three layers?

No way.

Mind you, last time I went into a recipe with a “that trick never works” mindset I was proved semi wrong…(see here for my icecream muffins.)

Still, it was the so-called beloved’s birthday and…I feel terrible for all you people born in the first week of January because…oh boy…I love to cook, I love to entertain…but by the time his birthday rolls around I’m usually kind of over it. Not to mention broke.

Which is another reason why the Magic Cake seemed too good to be true.

i thought it may be one of those things where the magic would only occur if you added the blood of seven virgins harvested on the 29 of February under a full moon.

But quelle surprise, there was just normal stuff…flour, butter, sugar, eggs…not a drop of virgin’s blood to be found. Good thing really, I don’t recall seeing a line of it at the local supermarket. Although I didn’t look too closely at the Heston Blumenthal range. Funny thing is, it doesn’t even seem too outrageous anymore does it? Browsing the shelves and seeing Heinz Tomato Ketchup, McIlhenney’s Tabasco Sauce, Blumenthal’s Virgin Blood…

But does it work?

Best answer I can give based on a sample size of one is… kinda, sorta, maybe.

There was a definite top layer but it was more meringue-y than cakey.

There was definitely a custardy middle. This was delicious by the way, sweet and creamy.

And, you can’t see this in any of the photo’s but there was a thicker layer of…..custardy type stuff on the bottom. The third layer was definitely discernible to the tooth if not the eye.

Hmm…if you notice, even in the original description the bottom layer is left bit vague…

To call this a cake is a stretch there was nothing cake-y about it. The thick later at the bottom was a little rubbery and not altogether pleasant. It tasted ok, it was just an odd texture which I didn’t really care for.

So, on a scale of magic, how does the Magic Cake rate?

Better than Bullwinkle, nowhere near as good as Neville Longbottom.

Hope your week is magic, whatever you get up to!

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08
Nov
2013

Fab Party Food, An Amazing Bloody Mary (and some spontaneous dancing round the kitchen)

categories: Cocktail, Eggs, Kale, Pie, Spice Peddler, Tomatoes, Vodka

A few weeks ago I, was chosen to be one of the brand ambassadors for The Spice Peddlers, a great shop in Sydney selling a fabulous range of herbs and spices!

Each month, they will send me a different spice or spice blend and I can play with it as much as I want.

Happy days people, happy, happy days.

I can’t tell you how excited this made me. Well, I can’t tell you…but I can can show you.

There may have been a bit of spontaneous dancing round the kitchen.

I may have done a little bit of this… Followed by a bit of this…

I drew the line here.

It seemed a little bit too Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks…

But I was right back into the groove with this…

That’s how excited I was.

Then I got my first blend and…the fear kicked in. What if it was terrible? What if I was totally uninspired? What if what I made turned out awful? What if the sky fell on my head? You know the usual nonsense panicky “I’m not worthy” that plagues the best of us at times….

Smoked Salmon Fritatta, Kale and Onion Pie, Best Bloody Mary Ever!

So first things first. Which for me was to open up the pack, lick my finger, dip it in and have a taste.

Yeah, I know…

I’m classy.

So much for the first unfounded fear. The team at the Spice Peddlers had sent me a container of their Middle Harbour Seasoning. This is a blend of sea salt, lime leaves, lime zest, Tasmanian Pepper, black pepper, green peppercorns, lemon myrtle, dill, chervil and green and white onion.

Otherwise known as delicious! It’s tangy from the lime, zingy from the pepper, punchy from the salt with a very slight herby, aniseedy undertone. So good. So, so good.

This would be perfect just spinkled on pita bread which is then toasted in the oven until crispy to have with dips and a lovely crisp cold glass of white wine on a hot summer day. And you know what? I’ll be doing that very soon.

Cooking With The Spice Peddler's Middle Harbour Seasoning — Cooking With The Spice Peddler’s Middle Harbour Seasoning

However, for the purpose of experimentation I wanted to get a bit more fancy.

We are heading into party season and I wanted to experiment with some new fingerfood dishes…have I ever mentioned how much I love fingerfood? There is something magical for me in a party pie, a mini burger, a bite-sized pizza, a canape….you get my drift.

I was once waxing lyrical to a friend about how if I owned a restaurant it would only serve small bits of food and wasn’t it crazy that no one had ever thought of that before?

She gave me a look. You know. That look. “They’re called tapas bars” she said in a voice that suggested she was speaking to the mentally incompetent.

Yeah but…

No but…

My idea is to have cocktails and fingerfood and it would only be open for the cocktail hour…

Ok…never mind…it’s a tapas bar.

Damn those Spanish and their eerily prescient good food ideas.

Let’s quickly move on and talk about some of my better ideas…like this:

Smoked Salmon and Herb Frittata

Makes 16 mini frittatas

8 eggs 400ml cream

500ml milk

4 spring onions

200g smoked salmon, chopped

2 tsp Middle Harbour Seasoning

1 tsp chopped tarragon

1 tsp chopped chervil

1 tsp chopped chives

1/4 cup grated parmesan

Preheat oven to 150º.

Whisk together the eggs, cream and milk.

Add the spring onions, salmon, spice mix and herbs and parmesan.

If not using the spice blend, season with salt & pepper and increase herbs to 1 tbsp each.

Pour into greased muffin trays and place in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until base and sides are set. Serve sprinkled with additional chives.

Next up, I made this Serious Eats recipe for

Kale and Onion Pie

Except again, I subbed in the Spice Peddler Middle Harbour Seasoning for half of the herbs and I also sprinkled a little bit of the mix on the top of the pastry before cooking.

The mixture for this is delicious. However, when I make this next time, instead of the “pastry” mix in the Serious Eats recipe I would use a really light crispy buttery shortcrust pastry or even a filo.

As soon as I tasted the Middle Harbour Mix I knew I wanted to make cocktail with it..and what else would go with a lemony, peppery zingy herb mix than a Bloody Mary?

Can i just digress for a moment to talk about how much I love a Bloody Mary? I love a Bloody Mary the way Don Draper loves a Manahattan. To me they are the height of sophistication. In my mind, enjoying a Bloody Mary is like enjoying oysters…when you can do it, you know you’re a grown up. Even more so if you can down one before noon!

I’m also a big fan of drinking my vitamins and all that tomato juice, has to be good for you!

This recipe is probably the best one I have tried. I think it’s the splash of sherry which adds a teeny bit of sweetness into the mix that does it – and I used the Spice Peddler Middle Harbour instead of the celery salt and also to rim the glass.

OMG, this was sooooo good, it set off another bout of dancing…

Bloody Mary

200ml tomato juice

1 tbsp Worchestershire sauce

1 tsp Spice Peddler Middle Harbour Seasoning or Celery Salt

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

6 drops Tabasco sauce

30ml Vodka

Splash of cream sherry

Stir ingredients in a mixing glass with ice, strain and serve!

I’m going to be spending my week perfecting my moves from my new favourite possession – the Barbie Allen Dance/Exercise Book.

She has an entire routine for Xanadu which I may share as a special Christmas Present for all of you…hell, if I get full enough of some Christmas spirit (we here at RFFMT are quite fond of a little bit o’ Hendricks for the holidays) I may even dance it for you!

Have a fabulous week whatever you do… Signature 1

30
Sep
2013

Free on E – I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For…Muffins?

categories: Books, Icecream, Minced Beef, Muffins, Potato

Just so we’re clear? Free on E is not my memoir of rave and single life in the ’90’s but a new thing I thought would be fun – I could cast my eye over some of the cookbooks available for free as ebooks and…you know…do what I do. Read. Cook. Mock. Eat.

And occasionally give a little “Eek” of delight when I find a hidden gem.

And because they’re readily available and free you can read, cook, mock and “Eek” right along with me!

Anyone actually wanting my memoir of rave life in the ’90’s? Sorry, that’s a completely different e-book that will be available for purchase in the not too distant. Just kidding. Unless anyone would actually pay money for it. In which case….hit the contact me button immediately. I’ll start writing….

Anyway, my first venture into “free on e” was “Rapid Recipes for Writers And Other Busy People” By Marsha Ward.

Oh boy.

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha….

To put it nicely, the 31 recipes in here are mostly pretty ordinary. I was seriously struggling to find one that I wanted to cook. There’s a lot of ground beef, a lot of canned soup and frozen vegetables. This is a typical example:

Boss Beef Dish

Make patties of:

2 lbs ground beef

4-5 grated potatoes

1 grated onion

1 tbsp garlic salt

2 eggs.

Brown both sides of patties in skillet.

Add mixture of:

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

1 1/2 cans water

1 lb frozen peas.

Simmer until warmed through.

Blecchhhh….

Then there’s

Garlic Baked Potatoes:

Cut a small triangle out of each potato; add 1/2 tsp garlic powder and replace triangle. Put a pat of butter on or margarine on potato, wrap in foil then bake in over or on coals in barbecue or campfire. Salt and pepper maybe added to margarine for extra flavour.

Hmmm…Enjoy that mouthful of burnt garlic powder. Why not just add the garlic powder to the margarine? Whilst we’re on the subject of garlic powder? It’s the devil’s work. Second only to margarine. Don’t even get me started on that particular rant…

I was just about to agree with the reviewer who said this book wasn’t worth free when I came across the recipe for:

Ice Cream Muffins

1 ½ cup self-raising flour

2 cups soft vanilla ice cream

Mix until dry particles are moist. Grease muffin tins; bake 20-25 minutes at 450 degrees F.

“No way” I thought. “There’s no way that’s going to work. That’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard”.

So, I made them.

Yeah, I don’t get how my mind works either.

And…believe it or not, they worked!

Don’t get me wrong, these weren’t the best muffins I’ve ever eaten but they were recognizably muffins and they were made out of ice cream and flour! That’s kind of awesome. And the possibilities are only as limited as the flavours of ice cream available to you. I didn’t have vanilla and I wasn’t about to buy some for a recipe that I was sure wasn’t going to work so mine were actually rum and raisin muffins.

This exercise also reminded me that if you ever need a dose of kooky in your life, spend an hour or so reading Amazon reviews. They’re hilarious!!! This gem was in the review section for Rapid Recipes for Writers.

Review

Let’s break this baby down shall we?

I’m not a good judge here. Didn’t stop you from writing a review though, did it!

This is an actual cookbook! Yeah. Uh huh. What did you think it was? A rubber chicken?

AND a lot of the recipes had MEAT. Maybe they don’t tell you in NaNoWriMo circles that it’s bad form to start a sentence with “and”*? Or that it’s kind of annoying when you capitalise RANDOM words.

I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t cook. So why buy a cookbook then? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t realise it was a cookbook (sigh…facepalm).

When you’re reviewing a book, it might also be useful to tell people more about the book than yourself**. I believe all we learned about “Rapid Recipes for Writers ” was that it was an actual cookbook! That contained MEAT.

What do I know though? Five out of seven people found that review helpful. Which only serves to confirm my belief that five out of seven people are idiots. Which I guess dear, smart, funny, cute, discerning reader leaves you and me!

We’ll head back to Vietnam next week….

Bye for now.

Signature 1 *For the pedants, I’m perfectly aware I started at least 3 sentences with “and” in this post. Please refer to sentence 3 in **below.

** For the most part people reading Amazon reviews are not remotely interested in what you eat or anything else about you. If you are that self-obsessed, maybe you should try blogging. The added benefit of which is, that when it’s your blog, you can start sentences with whatever the hell you want.

15
Apr
2013

Retro food For Modern Times – Yes, We Have No Bananas

categories: Bacon, Bananas, Books, Chicken & Poultry, Desserts, Orange Flower Water, Pie, Rhubarb

Bananas are not my favourite fruit. I put it down to an ill-advised visit to a…(please don’t let my mum be reading this)… “show” in Amsterdam when I was, younger and more prone to ~~drunkenness~~ peer pressure than I am now. It took many a year before I could even look at a banana (or anyone dressed in a Batman costume) without an inward cringe and a slight sense of shame.

But, even a banana-phobe like me could not resist trying out the recipe for Rhubarb and Banana Pie in Good Cooking For Everyone. Here is a sneak peek at how that turned out before we turn to some less appetising uses.

OMG that pie was good!!!

I’m conquering my fears in more ways than one this week – bananas and homemade pastry! If only Christian Bale would drop by we could go for the hat trick. Anyway, I had a little flick through Good Cooking for Everyone whilst I was waiting for my pastry to chill and there seemed to be a lot fewer recipes containing bananas than I remembered.

Here is what was listed:

However, my eagle eye soon discovered out the recipes Mary Meredith tried to hide. So, today, allow me to present the Banana File of Shame (and a really, really, good pie recipe)!

Mary Meredith seems to have had quite the predilection for bananas and bacon as they feature in three recipes. I had no idea this was a thing but Niki Sengit gives the combination a stamp of approval in her Flavour Thesaurus (one of my favourite food books) so I guess it must be. Like Mary, Niki also gives a recipe for Bacon Wrapped Bananas. However it is the cheese sauce in Mary Meredith’s recipe that moves it from what Niki calls “fun” to what I call “Ewww”!

Bacon and Banana Corkscrews

Then there are Bacon, Kidney and Banana Kebabs. I have never cooked with, or even knowingly eaten, kidneys. And after reading the second sentence in this recipe which made me gag, it will probably stay that way! The faint of stomach may want to skip recipe.

Bacon, Banana and Kidney Kebabs 001

There is also a sneaky use of bananas in the Sunrise Breakfast. I initially thought the things on the serving platter with the tomatoes were sausages. But who ever heard of people eating sausages for breakfast? Crumbed bananas make far more sense. If you’re insane.

Mind you, I’m obviously a bit slow because I made the same mistake with the Sunday Chicken which also features bananas cunningly disguised as sausages.

Another combination I would never have thought of but Niki assures me that breaded chicken with banana was served on the Titanic and features in F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s novel Tender is the Night! Mary Meredith also features chicken and bananas in her recipe for Stuffed Boned Chicken.

I would have included the pages on how to bone a chicken. Unfortunately, the 13-year-old boy whose sense of humour I stole was snickering so hard at the phrase “boning a chicken” that I had to let it go.

Mary is also not afraid to take food from other climes and destroy them with the inappropriate inclusion of the banana.

A recipe called Flamenco Rice should invoke Spain. It should bring up images of a glamorous Spanish woman, holding the edge of her brightly coloured ruffled dress and twirling, or clicking her castanets to the tune of a classical guitar. Or, at the very least, Paella.

Fried eggs and fried bananas on a bed of rice served with tomato sauce is not flamenco. It’s not even the Macarena.

flamenco 001

France also does not fair well. Bananas as an accompaniment to Fondue? No thanks.

Fabulous copper fondue pot though!

Finally, the hidden gem in the shape of a Rhubarb and Banana Pie. This was awesome!

I made a few small changes to the recipe as given. I wanted a really short, almost a shortbread, crust so I used the Almond Sweetcrust Pastry in Alan Campion and Michelle Curtis’ In The Kitchen instead of that suggested by Mary. If you are scared of large quantities of butter look away now.

I mastered the pastry only to discover my pie dish had disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle that hovers over my house. But, in the spirit of keep calm and carry on, I crossed my fingers and rolled the pastry into a soufflé dish.

I added 1 teaspoon of Orange Flower Water into the mix before I loaded it into the Pie Crust. I love the mix of rhubarb and orange!

Banana and Rhubarb Pie ingredients loaded into crust

The pie was fabulous, the flavours worked beautifully together and the pastry was light and crisp. I kept my rhubarb and my banana relatively chunky which made for an interesting mix – one mouthful would be heavily rhubarb in flavour, the next would be almost entirely banana. If you wanted less sharply defined flavours, you could cook the rhubarb to soften it, then mash be bananas in.

I may be biased but I think mine looks pretty good, despite the use of a soufflé dish!!!

Mary's Rhubarb and Banana Pie — Mary’s Rhubarb and Banana Pie

Rhubarb and Banana Pie Recipe

Almond Sweetcrust Pastry

They say the best way to get rid of your phobias it to face them. So, this week I’m going to be spending a lot of time looking at pictures of Christian Bale on the internet.

And no, it’s not pervy. It’s therapy!

Enjoy whatever catches your eye this week.

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08
Apr
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times: Good Cooking for (Almost) Everyone (1981)

categories: 1970's food, Bacon, Books, Cake, Prunes, Sandwiches, Vintage Cookbooks

Hello there, time to take a look into a new book.

Welcome to Mary Meredith’s Good Cooking for Everyone.

Good Cooking For Everyone by Mary Meredith 002

Let me just start with a little quibble. When i think of 1981, I think of this:

And not so much this:

Mary Meredith 001

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a go at Mary here. This book was first published in 1970 and this was a probably a perfectly acceptable photo back then. Eleven years later, you’d think that maybe the publishers could have forked out for a new publicity photo. Maybe one using that new technology of colour.

The 500 “specially selected recipes” in this book do address a wide audience, if not exactly everyone.

In keeping with the Livvie theme above, there are sandwiches that would suit people watching their weight:

Lettuce and Lemon Sandwiches 001

And recipes for those who are most definitely not.

Mary calls this “California Stuffed Forehock.” I prefer to think of it as “The Reason Elvis (Permanently) Left the Building”. The prunes in the recipe could explain why he was found on the toilet.

Californian Stuffed Forehock 001

Enough for 4 people or one bacon lovin’ popstar!

From The King, to proper royalty, Mary Meredith also provides us with a dainty dish to set before a king. Four and twenty blackbirds anyone?

Cutlet Pie

In fairness to Mary, it’s not actually blackbirds but a mix of lamb kidneys and cutlets. In fairness to modern sensibility, I was staring at this picture wondering how to describe the sheer awfulness of a pie with bones in little bootees sticking out of it. Mark looked at it over my shoulder. “You’re not making that are you?” he asked, sounding a little shaky. I assured him I was not. “Good” he said. “Because it looks fucking horrible.” Description problem solved.

Then, there are recipes for people who want their cakes to look like footwear. (Why? WHY???)

Shoe cake - who doesn't want to eat an old boot on their birthday! — Shoe cake – who doesn’t want to eat an old boot on their birthday!

And recipes for people who want to traumatise their children. Never mind the chocolate-roll cats at the front, what are those weird shiny pink things with faces ? Apart from the stuff of nightmares?

Children's Party Food — Children’s Party Food

I did however manage to find one group of people for who Mary was not catering for. I was searching the index of this book when, in the B’s, I came across:

Baked Lemon Potatoes
Batch of scones

It’s an odd way of listing these items but there were corresponding entries under L, P and S so whilst kooky, they weren’t entirely random. (But again, maybe something that should have been corrected in the 1981 edition.)

I also noticed under M:

Making a jug of cocoa

Using this logic surely every recipe should be listed under M?

Making Lettuce and lemon sandwiches
Making Elvis Has Left The Building, etc.

And just to be really irritating there is no corresponding entry under C listing:

Cocoa, Making a jug of

I’m sorry cocoa drinkers of the world, I guess if you were of a logical mind in 1981 and wanted to find out how to make a jug of your favourite drink (without having to scan through 499 other recipes), you were S.O.L.

I’m spending the weekend with a jug of margaritas… it was going to be cocoa but the recipe was too damn hard to find!

So much for an alcohol free April!

Whatever your tipple, have a great week.

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