Easter with my family at home involves a few very important components…
hand decorated eggs…
which go into our Easter basket…
which contains all manner of Polish traditions…
including Polish Cheesecake called Sernik…
The common theme to all of these components is food! lots and lots of food…
Even my 12 year old cousin, Indy, got in on the baking action with these amazing biscuits…it must run in the family!…
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With the long weekend stretching ahead of me, I finally had time to do a bit of baking. I’ve got a vast collection of food magazines with post it notes sticking out of them marking ‘must bake’ items. A cake in a back issue of Olive magazine has been playing on my mind recently so the decision of what to bake for my family this Easter was a real no-brainer…the cake of choice…a very naughty looking cardamom coffee mud cake…
In my opinion you really can’t go wrong with a cake that contains strong cardamom infused coffee and no less than 600g of dark chocolate!
To make it you need…
12 cardamom pods, seeds removed and pods discarded
200ml strong coffee
200g dark chocolate
200g unsalted butter
3 eggs
80ml soured cream
400g golden caster sugar
170g plain flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
30g cocoa powder
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Grease and line a 23cm cake tin with greaseproof paper.
Lighty crush the cardamom seeds in a pestle and mortar before adding them to a saucepan with the strong coffee. Simmer this fragrant concoction for about 10 minutes until it has reduced down to 120ml.
Melt the chocolate and the butter and add in the reduced coffee and cardamom mixture.
Beat the eggs, soured cream and sugar together. Add this to the chocolatey, coffee goo and stir until combined.
Finally sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and cocoa into the bowl and fold it in before pouring the complete mix into the prepared tin.
Bake for 1 hour, check whether it’s cooked by inserteing a skewer or sharp knife into the centre of the cake, if it comes out clean, it’s ready, if not, put it back in the oven for a few more minutes.
Whilst it’s cooling you can prepare your ganache mud icing…beware…reading any further may cause hardening of the arteries!
To make your mud frosting you need…
400g dark chocolate
100g unsalted butter
1tbsp golden syrup
Melt the chocolate in a saucepan and then add the butter in small lumps so that is melts into the mix. Add the golden syrup and stir until smooth. Leave the mud to cool until spreadable. This requires patience, which I don’t have, in my haste I made the mistake of trying to hurry the process along by putting it in the fridge…this accelerated the process too much and when I tried to spread the icing onto the cake it hardened into a big unspreadable blob! PANIC set in but with the help of my Mum, a spatula and a jug of boiling water I managed to avoid total disaster! You should learn from my mistakes but if you happen to have this issue too, all you need to do it warm a metal spatula or knife in boiling water and gradually smooth the icing over the cake, do a bit at a time and then reheat your implement and work on smoothing another section of icing. I’ve learnt my lesson…next time I’ll just leave the mud to cool gradually (out of the fridge) it would benefit from still being fairly gooey for optimum spreading consistency.
Cut the cake in half and spread a layer of mud in the middle before sandwiching it and coating it all over with a thick layer of amazing, so bad it’s good for you, muddy ganache!
and hey presto…it wasn’t a complete disaster and was still a goregously dense chocolate cake with a cardamom coffee twist and a coronary inducing coating…mmmmm!
I got a bit carried away with my decorating and as if the chocolate ganache frosting wasn’t enough I decided to kitsch it up with some Easter decorations and a huge gold bow so it ended up looking like some kind of alternative wedding cake :)…
As a perfectionist, I wasn’t 100% happy with the finished appearance of the cake but it turned out to be absolutely delicious. It only contained only the tiniest amount of flour, which meant that it was amazingly dense and fudgy, even my sister who doesn’t like cake, loved it!
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I love observing the building hype of a new restaurant opening. I’m a big fan of The Garrison and Village East so was very excited to hear that they were growing their dynasty and opening a brand new venture…The Riding House Cafe. I’ve been following their regular blogs and tweets closely, saw the arrival of their new signage and seating and have heard all about the trials and tribulations experienced before the launch. The minute I heard that they were taking bookings I jumped into action, not only because my curiosity had been piqued but as an added bonus…they were offering 50% off all food until May.
The day of my booking arrived and I was really looking forward to the experience as all reviews I’d read so far had been positive. Now, I’m one of those rarities…a non-iphone/smartphone owner, which doesn’t usually impact negatively on my life, apart from when I’m lost and the rudimentary map I’ve scribbled on a post it note just isn’t up to scratch! This is the sitaution I found myself in on my way to the RHC, my sense of direction is shocking and for some reason I was sure Great Titchfield Street was closer to Tottenham Court Road than Oxford Circus…duh!
When I finally arrived I was instantly impressed…the place is huge and the decor emits the cool, quirky, stylishness that the other 2 restaurants do so well! We were sat at a corner table with bright red comfy banquet seating. The staff were very attentive and what they lacked in knowledge (i.e where the toilets were) they made up for in enthusiasm.
Everything on the menu sounded amazing, which posed the problem of what to choose. In the end we settled for a carafe of red wine and some bread with deliciously fruity olive oil and artichoke puree to aid with the decicion making process.
We had a couple of small plates to start with…slow roasted pork belly with cumin salt…
Which was so succulent with crackling to die for…perfect for a total salt fiend like me!
We also had tasty chermoula spiced poussin with jalapeno and lemon on a tabbouleh style salad…
I’d had my eye on the steak but was informed that the 8oz sirloin was off the menu and all they had was a 10oz ribeye. Usually this wouldn’t faze me but for some reason I just didn’t think I would do such a large steak justice so I opted for the cheeseburger with smoked cheddar, gherkin and chips…
The chips had the skin on and were cooked to perfection as was my burger. Even though it was delicious it beat me, which is nearly unheard of!
My friend Kim had simple but tasty fish and chips with pea puree and tartare sauce…
We were so unbelievably full but had seen an amazing dessert pass us by earlier on the way to another customer and just couldn’t resist looking at the dessert menu…our powers of deduction brought us to the conclusion that the dessert in question was a hot fudge sundae with macaroons and honeycomb pieces…
The fullness we’d felt moments earlier disappeared as we tucked into the layers of creamy, smooth ice cream, hot, rich chocolate sauce, chewy but crunchy macaroons all topped off with nuggets of honeycomb. I think a quote from Belinda Carlisle would sum it up for me perfectly ‘Ooh heaven is a place on earth’! Heaven, right then and there, was a hot choc fudge sundae in The Riding House Cafe!
I highly recommend you visit…just make sure you’re hungry and leave your diet at the door! I’m going to have to visit again to work my way through all the items on the menu that I didn’t get a chance to try first time round…it’s a tough job but hey, someone’s got to do it!
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My Mum’s hot cross buns…most definitely the best in the world!
I’m still taking advantage of rhubarb being readily available on the supermarket shelves at the moment and on a recent rummage through my baking cupboard I discovered no less than 8 half used packets of ground almonds, luckily all still within their best before dates! I asked my good friend google what I could make with ‘rhubarb’ and ‘ground almonds’ and was presented with multiple rhubarb crumble recipes, but in amongst them I found a lovely blog called Girl Interrupted Eating and a gorgeous sounding recipe for Rhubarb and Almond Tart. Decision made, I turned my music up loud, poured a glass of red wine, donned my apron and started baking my own rhubarb bakewell tart…
To make the shortcrust pastry base…
300g plain flour
150g butter, chilled and cut into cubes
3 tbsp caster sugar
3tbsp of water
Sift the flour into a bowl, add the butter cubes and rub together with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
Add the water and mix to form a dough. I find it’s easiest to get you hands in there and bring the dough together into a ball. Then wrap it in cling film and chill for 20 minutes in the fridge.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Prepare a 30cm tart dish by greasing it with butter and dusting lghtly with flour (that’s what my mum always does).
For the filling…
500g rhubarb cut into 1cm lengths
150g butter
150g caster sugar
150g ground almonds
100g self raising flour
2 eggs
1 vanilla pod
Zest of one orange
2 tbsp flaked almonds
Roll out the chilled pastry and line the tart tin. Lie a sheet of greaseproof paper on top and pour in some baking beads (rice works just as well). Put the pastry case in the oven to bake blind for 25 minutes.
Put half of the rhubarb in a saucepan, cover and cook for 5 minutes. I also added a squeeze of the orange juice into the mix.
Meanwhile you can make the almondy filling…
Becky’s recipe said to use a food processor to blend together the butter and sugar but I don’t have one so I used my handheld mixer to cream them together until light and fluffy. Add the ground almonds, flour, eggs , seeds scraped from the vanilla pod and the orange zest and mix well.
Turn the oven down to 175 degrees.
Remove the baking beads and paper from the pastry case and leave somewhere to cool. Mix the cooked rhubarb with the raw rhubarb and spread over the bottom of the pastry lined tin. Spoon the almond mixture on top and spread it out as evenly as possible, although I found this easier said than done and got in a pickle!
Put the tart in the oven for 40 minutes until golden on top. After about 30 minutes scatter the top of the tart with the flaked almonds so that they toast slightly.
And there you have it…
Bakewell tart with a rhubarbey twist! The flecks of vanilla and orange zest in the moist almond layer were a delight. The balance of the sweet almondy cakey layer with the tang of the unsweetened rhubarb was perfection.
I packed up my the tart and transported it all the way to Winchester for a friends birthday, only to find out that he didn’t even like rhubarb! We did a pretty good job of polishing it off for him though, even enjoying a slice the morning after the night before…rhubarb bakewell tart…breakfast of champions!
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My weekend started wonderfully with an invitation to a brunch hosted by Jordans Cereal and the lovely Uyen (Leluu of Fernandez and Leluu Supper Club fame). Jordans have been making muesli and granola from their mill in Biggleswade since the 70’s and have been in the milling trade for 150 years so they definitely know their stuff! I have very fond childhood memories of staying overnight at my Granny and Grandad’s house. As a special treat we were allowed a bowl of Grandad’s Jordans granola for breakfast…clusters of delicious crunchy cereal that’d make your jaw ache if you were greedy enough to overfill your bowl (which I always was)!
The favourite part of my day is the quiet time that I spend eating my bowl of muesli and gazing out of the window before kick starting myself into action and heading to work! I’ve tried many different varieties of muesli, and by coincidence, can honestly say that my favourite by far is Jordans Fruit and Nut…
The reason that the team from Jordans and Wildcard had invited us to this event was to launch their new Creations Oat Granola range in baked apple with a hint of cinnamon and juicy cranberry and golden honey…
We sampled them both whilst sipping prosecco and listening to how the new range had come about and a bit more of the thinking behind it. As with all Jordans cereals, the creations range doesn’t contain anything artificial and is sweetened using only honey. I can honestly say that they were delicious! My favourite was the juicy cranberry and golden honey. There was no shortage of juicy fruit and it appealed to my sweet tooth without feeling unhealthy…
My competitve streak was also spurred into action when we were invited to take part in the search for the next flavour to join the Creations range. Bowls of tasters were placed on the table for inspiration…
I cogetated and deliberated over a bowl of delicious dates…I’m so addicted to them!
At first the possibilities seemed endless but actually whittling it down and deciding what would be a winning combination was pretty tricky. I kept thinking of date and walnut but then thought back to some biscotti I’d made recently and decided that coffee and walnut granola would work really well! It’s a classic combination used in baking and in my eyes a match made in heaven. I’m sure it’s never been done as a cereal before.
Also having just made my first ever rhubarb bakewell tart, I think almond and rhubarb granola would be a great combo too!The tartness of the rhubarb offset against the lightly toasted honeyed oats and crisp almond mmmm…
My wildcard (forgive the pun), if a little risky, would be a mango and chilli chocolate variety…but maybe that’s just a step too far! 🙂
With all this creative inventiveness and talk of food I’d worked up a bit of an appetite, thank goodness, as Uyen had prepared a vast brunch for us…
She’d also made an amazing lobster and pomegranate salad with a passionfruit, lime and honey dressing…
Tomato, caramelised onion, goats cheese and rosemary tart…
Smoked salmon and creamy scrambled eggs…
and if that wasn’t enough to have us unbuttoning our waistbands, we finished off with orange and vodka panna cotta with a strawberry and blueberry sauce…I was in dessert heaven!…
I had to rush off, as quickly as my brunch belly would allow, as I was heading out of town for the weekend but not before being presented with a gift of the cutest wicker picnic hamper filled with Jordans goodies…
I think all weekends should start this way! and I’ve now got enough Jordans cereal to last me a very long while…it’s a hard life 😉
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Last weekend my Mum presented me with a new recipe book, ‘Jamie’s Monster Bake Sale’ a collection of recipes put together by Jamie Oliver for Red Nose Day, to raise money for Comic Relief and the Jamie Oliver Foundation, not only through it’s sale but by encouraging people to try the yummy recipes and raise money by holding….you got it…a Monster Bake Sale!
All of the 13 recipes sound amazing and the 2 I’ve tried so far have been super tasty. As she handed it over, my Mum raved about the delicious looking sticky rhubarb and ginger cake at the back of the book. So my choice of Mother’s Day present was pretty much a no brainer!
Here it is…sticky rhubarb and ginger cake for my Mum…
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a 20cm round cake tin with greaseproof paper.
To make the rhubarb topping…
250g rhubarb
100g caster sugar
2 tbsp stem ginger syrup
Slice the rhubarb into 4cm lengths and put them in a pan with the caster sugar and 2 tbsp of syrup from the jar of stem ginger. Bring to the boil, and then turn down and cook on a low heat for 5 minutes until the rhubarb is cooked but hasn’t turned to slush.
For the cake…
200g butter
150g dark brown sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
150ml milk
2 eggs
300g self raising flour
2 tsp ground ginger
3-4 balls stem ginger, finely chopped and 2 more tbsp of the syrup
Heat the butter in a pan with the dark brown sugar and golden syrup, once melted set aside to cool.
Whisk the eggs with the milk and mix them together with the cooled butter mixture and finally the remaining ingredients (flour, ground and chopped ginger). Stir well before pouring into the prepared cake tin.
Carefully arrange the strips of rhubarb on top of the cake mix but save the magic rhubarb syrup for later. Bake the cake for 1 hour 20 minutes until it’s risen and beautifully golden. After an hour you can sneak a peek and if it looks like the top of the cake is browning a bit too much, loosely cover it with some tin foil for the last few minutes of cooking. When you think it’s ready, insert a skewer into the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean…it’s ready!
Here comes the best bit…spoon the sticky rhubarb syrup over the hot cake. This produces a very pleasing sizzle and a sweet, spicy, fruity aroma to die for!
Fresh out of the oven…
Try to exercise some self restraint and leave it to cool in the tin, giving the syrup time to work its way into the cake, before serving…
It turns out that the women in my family are very well tuned into each other…I discovered that we came dangerously close to having 2 sticky rhubarb and ginger cakes to gorge on…it was so delicious, it wouldn’t have been much of a hardship to be honest with you! It had a great dense but moist texture with little juicy nuggets of stem ginger throughout and the slightly tart rhubarb to cut through it, taking away any sickly sweetness!
Why not serve with crème fraiche, cream, custard, ice cream or just simply on its own…in my book, anything goes and the possibilities are endless!
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The Afternoon Tease is 1 today!
Who’d have thought that an experimental dabble into the world of blogging on 30 March 2010 would lead to 102 posts chocka block full of recipes, supper club, restaurant and cafe adventures, general food based ramblings and more pornographic food photography than you could shake a stick at!
But here we are…and how better to celebrate than with some birthday baking…
This little beauty is a banana and passionfruit muffin with lemon icing…
It’d be rude not to share, so here’s the recipe…
125g butter
315g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
150g light muscovado sugar
110g pecans, chopped
3 ripe bananas
pulp of 3 passionfruit
zest of 1 medium lemon
65ml milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees and line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.
Melt the butter and then leave to cool, whilst you sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a large bowl. Stir the sugar and pecans into the flour mixture.
In another bowl mash the bananas. Add in the passionfruit pulp, lemon zest, cooled butter, milk and lightly beaten eggs and mix together.
Pour the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Be careful not to overmix or the muffins will end up heavy.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared cases (I still always manage to get myself in a mess doing this bit) and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown and beautifully risen. Remove them from the oven and leave them to cool on a wire rack before icing…
For the icing you will need to mix 150g icing sugar with the juice from 1 lemon. Start off by adding just 3/4 of the juice to the sugar to make a paste and then gradually add a little more at a time until you have made a thick but spreadable icing….and then…dollop it on top!…
I’ve never baked with passionfruit before but I could smell it’s distinctive tropical aroma the minute the muffins came out of the oven. It was a really interesting addition, which also added great texture. The muffins were delicious eaten slightly warm from the oven. The recipe I was following said that they don’t keep very well…
hey ho…I’d better eat another one then! After all it’s my party and I’ll eat as many muffins as I want to!
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I’m aware that the ‘Ottolenghi’ craze seems to be sweeping the nation and it may look like I’m just jumping on the bandwagon, but I’ve been dying to go to an Ottolenghi restaurant for a very long time. I’ve also spent the last 2 years gazing longingly into the windows of the branch on Upper Street twice a day on the bus to and from work. I’m not quite sure why it’s taken me so long to pull my finger out and eat there, but this week, having made a reservation through their website the time had finally come!
We were seated at the huge communal table that stretches the length of the restaurant, the lights were dimmed and the atmosphere was buzzing with lively conversation.
Our lovely waitress took us through the menu, which was split into two columns…’from the counter’ and ‘from the kitchen’. She recommended that we chose a mixture of 5 dishes between 2 of us from both sections as the ‘from the counter’ ones would obviously arrive sooner than the ones ‘from the kitchen’, therefore staggering the meal and giving you time to savour everything. The menu sounded absolutely divine and I could have happily worked my way through every single dish. We somehow managed to whittle it down to…
Yellow fin, line caught seared tuna, wrapped in nori and panko with wasabi cream…
Roasted aubergine with tahini and yoghurt sauce, chilli, basil and toasted flaked almonds…
Pan fried sea bass with garlic crisps and mixed mushroom, seaweed and truffle oil salad…
Pan fried cured mackerel with parsnip and saffron puree, roasted rhubarb, rhubarb salsa and pasrley leaves…
Ricotta and basil stuffed courgette flower with wild rhyme honey, pine nuts and lemon zest…
It was the type of food that’s so good, you eat it painfully slowly, savouring every single mouthful and not wanting it to ever end!
We were handed the dessert menu but also lead to the front of the shop to peruse all of the other delights on offer. I was like a child in a sweetshop and we couldn’t decide on only one each so we chose…
Baked vanilla cheesecake with caramel and macadamia nuts…
Moist chocolate cake filled with deicious baileys cream…
and because we’re fatties…a delicious cupcake with the lightest cream cheese frosting I have ever tasted…
In summary…Yottam Ottolenghi is an absolute god!
How someone can make even a simple aubergine taste that good is working some kind of magic! The meal was a bit pricier than I would usually opt for mid-week, but it was worth every penny. Now I just need to win the lottery or get swept off my feet by a rich man so that I can eat there all the time 😉
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Last week I paid a visit to The Sampler in Islington. They’ve got such a good concept going on…a wine shop with a selection of the wines that they sell open for you to taste. You may not think thats very out of the ordinary, bit at The Sampler they have magic dispensing machines, you pay money onto a special wine credit card and then hit the dispensers…you can choose between a 25ml or 50ml sample or a whole glass and as you would imagine these go up in price depending on quantity but also on the variety of wine. We tried some really good wines at very resonable prices but then got a bit carried away as we approached the ‘Wine Icons’ section. The prospect of tasting a £409 bottle of wine was just too much and we splashed out on a slurp of the Chateau Margaux, 1999. It still costs us £20 for the smallest sample but it just had to be done! I’ll definitely be back for some DIY wine tasting!
Afternoon Tease 