mamaCaz

So, it’s been about four years or so since I posted and what can I say? Life gets in the way sometimes.

In my time away we have moved house, suffered a 50cm cooker, and purchased a BEAUTIFUL Rangemaster dual fuel range. Her name is Bertha and Reader- SHE COMPLETES ME! I’m such a loser, but having such a big, beautiful oven and gas hobs again really has taken an awful lot of stress out of cooking.

So, it’s time for another recipe.

Our new favourite snack is cheesy popcorn. The girls first tried it at CheeseFest in the Custard Factory- where it was free and plentiful- but I haven’t been able to recreate it at home. Until now!

Take two tablespoons of popping corn, and get it popped (whether that’s in a machine or a pan, it doesn’t matter).

Melt two tablespoons of salted butter and toss it through the popcorn. As you’re doing this, get a friend/child/spouse to sprinkle over a tablespoon of CHEESE POWDER. Yes- this is actually a thing. Check amazon. It’s really astonishing and will change your life (or just enable you to make cheese popcorn and cheesier Mac n cheese).

I recommend you eat this warm- it’s so good!

So, when asked by extremely complimentary friends whether I would mind making their daughter a cake for her second birthday, the answer seemed to be an unequivocal ‘yes!’. And when I heard that their delightful little munchkin was really into Paddington Bear, it seemed like an easy enough task. STUPID ME!! As if I could make a bear out of cake??!! 

What was I thinking?!

So I did my research and soon realised the thing to do was make a cake in the shape of a suitcase, and sit a little bear on top. 

And which cake should I make? Why, marmalade of course!! 

I do feel that using a cuddly Paddington bear is a cop out, but my ‘skills’ just don’t stretch that far.  

In the end, no one minded, and everyone loved the cake (they are very nice people, though!)

So, the recipe:

Paddington’s Marmalade Cake

Stage One

350g butter

350g caster sugar

350g self raising flour

6 large eggs

Zest and juice of 2 large oranges

150g marmalade 
Quite simply, shove everything together and beat until combined. It will smell AMAZING. 

Grease and line two tray bake tins (approx. 20 x 26cm).

Evenly split mixture between the two tins. Bake in a 180c oven for 35 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool.
Stage Two

150g marmalade

600g buttercream (whichever recipe/sort you favour. I like icing and butter, but lots of people prefer the American style frosting with egg whites and all sorts)

Sandwich the two cakes together to get the flattest top possible. Use a good whack of buttercream and the marmalade to stick them together, and then coat the entire thing with an even layer of buttercream.
Stage Three

Four packets of mid-brown regal icing

One packet dark brown chocolate icing

Squish the four packs of mid-brown icing together and roll out to a rectangle large enough to cover the cake with a bit to spare. Use a rolling pin to help lift the icing and smooth down over the cake.

Cut circles out of the dark brown icing and, using a little water, glue these over the corners. Use a chopstick to press in ‘stitches’ around the edge of each. 

Cut squares out of the dark brown icing to create the hinges on the back of the case. Stick on using water.

Make a handle out of the remaining icing. Stick on.

Leave everything to set. Then serve.

So I haven’t blogged in a while, which goes against my entire reason for having a blog in the first place. But what can I say? It’s harder than I thought to have half an hours of self indulgence every day!

Anyway, tea today. I bought some cheap lemon sole from the supermarket at the weekend and decided I fancied a Chinese-style feast tonight. What to do? If in doubt: FRY!! 

And guess what? It was blinking gorgeous. And a darned sight cheaper than take away.

Ingredients

2 lemon sole fillets

Half a bag of saver stir fry

Chop suey noodles

1 green pepper, sliced

4 shredded spring onions

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 red chilli, thinly sliced

Various sauces

Directions

Cook the noodles according to pack instructions.

Stirfry the packet veg. Add oyster sauce (or whichever sauce you prefer) and lashings of sesame oil.

Coat the fish in half half plain flour and five spice.

Heat an inch of oil in a wok. Fry fish for one minute, then drain. And get rid of the oil.

Add noodles to veg.

In the fish wok, stir fry the pepper, chilli, garlic and spring onions with soy and sesame oil.

Bung the noodles on a plate, then top with fish, then the fried spicy veg. Add soy to taste.

Devour.

My gorgeous niece is staying with us this week and therefore we are spoiling her rotten (them be the rules!). Her request for breakfast this morning was pancakes, and – ladies and gentlemen – I have finally cracked American pancakes! Previously they have been too crispy, too thin, too chewy; all sorts of things one wouldn’t want in a breakfast pancake. Today? Sublime! HOORAY!! 

  
Look at it! Look at that rise! The crisp edges and golden skin! YUM!

So here’s the recipe:

270g plain flour

4 tbsp golden caster sugar

1tsp salt

2tsp baking powder

2 tablespoons melted butter

2 eggs

250ml milk

Mix all the dry ingredients in a good size bowl.

Mix the wet stuff in a jug.

Whisk them together. Leave for five minutes while you make a cuppa.

Fry in a little butter or oil until bubble pop on the surface, then flip them over for another 30 seconds or so. 

Serve with a little salt and maple syrup if you’re me, strawberries, syrup and chocolate spread if you’re four!

Any ideas for additional toppings or feedback, leave em in the comments!

So here’s a recipe for you all to try. I can’t stop eating the results so sadly no pictures other than one of the paltry remains (sorry, I’m only just getting the hang of this).

Italian Whirly Bread (source: cheese and pesto whirls, Good Food mag)
  
450g strong white bread flour

Small teaspoon of fine salt 

7g fast action yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

Some olive oil

Pesto (homemade, fresh, jar, fancy or original flavour, really doesn’t matter)

Sun blush tomatoes with half of their oil, briefly blitzed in a chopper

100g grated mozzarella 

100g grated mature cheddar

To make the dough put the salt in a bowl, then the flour, then the sugar, yeast and a glug of oil (1 tablespoon should do it). Add about 250ml warm water and stir together until you get a dough. Too dry? Keep adding another splash of water until the dough holds together and is sticky to the touch.

To knead do the drag and roll: hold your dough with one hand and with the heel of the other drag an edge of it up and across the floured surface. Then roll that edge back to your still hand and turn the dough a quarter turn. Repeat. Keep this up for ten minutes until the dough is soft, but not really sticky any more, and quite stretchy.

Bung it in an oiled bowl in a warm ish room for an hour or so until twice as big.

Give it a few punches to get the air out, then roll into a rectangle. The dough should be just under alone centimetre thick. Now it gets a big like a cinnamon bun. Spread the dough with all your goodies and roll it up by lifting the long edge furthest from you and rolling in. Then cut into slices about 2cm thick and pop in an oiled baking tin, spiral side visible. Let the spirals grow and develop for another half an hr and then bake at 180 for about 35 mins. They should be golden and amazing by this time.

Cool slightly. Scoff.

Any exciting variations you try out, please note in the comments so I can give them a whirl (geddit? Whirl? Like the bread??)

As it is Eurovision tonight, I’ve given a fair amount of thought to Austrian cuisine. Other than ‘schnitzel with noodles’ (and bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens etc etc etc) the only appropriate food seemed to be good old apple strudel. As someone who dislikes cooked apples and sweet pastry, this failed to ignite my excitement, but what Eurovision requires, Eurovision gets.

So, strudel. Having watched Bake Off’s strudel task and read a few bits and bobs I understood that strudel was a bit of a bastard to make from scratch, what with all the stretching and spreading of the pastry. The only alternative, however, is to use filo pastry, which tastes of paper and is therefore not worth the bother. So I sought out help: Felicity Cloake was my saviour here. She wrote one of her Guardian ‘How to Make the Perfect’ pieces on apple strudel (if you’ve never read this column you absolutely must, it’s brilliant), and I used this as my guidance.

Newsflash: strudel is nowhere near as hard as ‘they’ would have you believe! Huzzah! Follow what that nice lady Felicity says and it will all be ok (although I did use different apples: half bramley; half Braeburn).  

 The chucking of the pastry at a work surface for fifteen minutes is hugely fun; you end up finding a rhythm and enjoying the different tempos and tones of the ‘slap slap SLAP!’ and can very much work out all that pent up desire to wallop people.

Anyway, the final result was an enormous hit with people who like that sort of thing. I even tried some. It was nice, as far as appley pastry things go. Admittedly, I did need to work a little harder on getting the pastry thinner, but it was definitely a success. So much so that I’m going to make it again.

So there you go! Google ‘perfect strudel’ and have a go. Definitely better than an Iceland special!

Continue reading Sourdough disaster!

Hi world.

I’ve decided to blog for two reasons:

1) Fun. Pure and simple.

2) To share some culinary disasters (so I don’t feel so bad about them), and some recipes and tips etc with similarly greedy people. Always fun.

I would dearly love everyone to read and enjoy this blog, but as I do not read blogs myself (other than Thommie Gillow’s and Alex Mees’) I am entirely sympathetic to those who can’t be arsed. Having said that, any advice or requests are gratefully received!

Here goes nothing….