Traditional Bulgarian Sweets

This year, Lundulph and I joined my Mum and Dad in Bulgaria over the Easter holidays, which I thought was very exciting.

We also rented a car and did a few day trips to a couple of other Bulgarian towns to see the historic Old Town Centres.

In one of these towns we found a really nice old fashioned coffee house at the end of the main street and decided to stop by and rest our feet over a coup of Turkish coffee "on sand". Turkish coffee is made in a special pot with very finely ground coffee. Together with water it is brought to the boil and removed from the heat several times so that foam builds up on the surface. The "on sand" part was that there was a tray filled with sand over a heating element. The special coffee pots were each only large enough for one coffee and were placed in the sand to boil. From what I could see, the sand thing was for show mainly. Regular cooker hobs work just as well.

Along with the Turkish coffee, we each also ordered a tall glass of water with a spoon of бяло сладко (byalo sladko). This translates to "white sweet" or "white preserve" and is basically pouring fondant. You sip the coffee, lick the fondant and drink the water in turns.

It was all very tasty. The coffee itself was far too small, so both my Mum and I had to order a second one.

The coffee house also sported a small corner with traditional sweets. Obviously having been part of the Ottoman Empire for some 5 centuries, Bulgaria has picked up extensive parts of Turkish cuisine and especially the tradition of fabulous desserts and super sweet bites. Without thinking much about it, I bought one of each thing they had, some of which I'd never seen before, but which made my Mum's eyes sparkle a bit.



Now that we are back home, Lundulph and I have been carefully working our way through these treasures.

The first things we had were the bright red caramel lollies in the shape of cockerels. I have fond memories of these as a child, these were a little disappointing as they had very sharp edges and I'm sure I cut my lips on mine. I think they were more child-friendly when I was little. Lundulph crunched through his very quickly, mumbling something about toffee apples.



I also sneakily had the sugar daisy a couple of days later. I thought it would have been flavoured with something, but it wasn't. It was very easy to chew, so I think it was made from some sort of sugar icing that had been allowed to dry out. I do have some vague memories of daisies and violets of this type of lolly.



Next we tried the нуга халва (nuga halwa), which is better known as French nougat. The one I bought was modernised with cocoa and wasn't as sweet and chewy as I expected. But it was very nice indeed and very close to my own past attempts at French Nougat. I'd always thought I'd failed, but perhaps I wasn't so far off after all.



The most mysterious thing in my goodie bag was балсуджук, pronounced balsujuk and I'm not entirely sure how to translate. Basically it is walnut halves threaded on a string, then dipped repeatedly in thickened grape must. This is a method normally used to make candles, so I was quite curious about this based on this fact alone. Very much like in the case of dipping a wick into melted wax and letting it cool and dipping again and thus gradually creating a candle, with the балсуджук, you have a string with fresh walnut halves, which are repeatedly dipped into sweetened and thickened grape must and allowed to cool and set between each dip. Eventually the walnuts are completely hidden inside and the ready thing looks a little like a knobbly sausage. Taste-wise it was disappointing, it was very bland and Lundulph didn't like the overall texture either. I don't know what grape must tastes like, but I expected it to taste of grapes at the very least. I have a feeling this балсуджук was a cheat and that grape juice mixed with water and gelatine had been used to create it. Still, the method of making is massively intriguing and I will try to get hold of some real grape must and see if I can do better.



The next thing was supposed to be the "карамел халва" (caramel halwa) which I suspect was something from Western Europe, not something traditional. It looked like a bar of toffee sprinkled with chopped nuts. Sadly, as I opened it, I noticed that the nuts had gone mouldy, despite a best before date of early October this year. So this thing had to go straight into the bin, a great shame, I was quite looking forward to it.



Of course, having decided to have something sweet to finish off our dinner, we needed a replacement and went for the last thing in the bag - локум с орехи (Turkish delight with walnuts). This one we could be fairly sure was not mouldy for the simple reason that it was well dusted with corn flour, so no moisture where the mould could sprout. It was also very very soft and hard to cut, but was very tasty indeed, not too sweet at all. Also on my to make list.

The one thing I wasn't able to get in the shop was пестил. Again something I had not come across before, but when I looked it up, it turns out I had read about it. This is in fact what is called fruit leather, though traditionally the Bulgarian пестил is made from plums, but other fruit works as well. Basically a fruit purée is made from chopped fruits and a little water. Sugar, lemon juice and spices are added to taste and the whole thing is blended smooth, then poured onto a shallow baking tray lined with cling film and this is then dried out on low heat in an oven until it resembles leather. By chance it is on one of my to try out lists and I will do so, as soon as I get a new cooker - I can't get low enough temperatures with my gas cooker, but an electric one can be set as low as 30 degrees C.

So on the whole interesting, though I had set my expectations a bit too high.

And Now For The Big Finale

Now it is time to temper chocolate. The teacher recommended starting with milk chocolate, it is the easiest one to temper.

The teacher also recommended that chocolate buttons are used. The reason for this is that they are all the same size and will melt at the same rate.

Since the cake I was decorating was supposed to look like a present with a bow, I selected a chocolate transfer sheet which would serve as the ribbon and bow around my present shaped cake. Before starting with this, take a good look at the cake and determine which side is the nicest looking one and remember it, this will be the front of the cake, the side that should be presented to the viewers.

A transfer sheet is an acetate sheet, which has coloured cocoa butter printed very thinly in a pattern on one side. From this I cut out two strips that would form the ribbon around the present. I made mine about 3 cm wide and measured so that they would be long enough to go from one bottom edge of the cake, across the top and down to the bottom edge on the opposite side. And two of them would form a cross. But, that would mean that one of the two strips would be covered by the other and would not be possible to remove! So I left one of the strips as it was and placed it over the cake where I was planning to place it. Then I took the second strip and measured up where it would cross the first one. Then I cut out the segment that crosses the first strip. That sorts out the ribbon part. But a present should really also have a bow. For this, I cut out four strips 3 cm wide and about 15 cm long. Then a further four strips at 3 cm by 10 cm. Then finally cut out one strip of 3 cm by 5 cm. This should still leave enough of the transfer sheet, in case you make mistakes. Now cut out a largish piece of baking paper and place the transfer strips with the chocolate side up and make sure to remember which strip is for what purpose. This piece of baking paper is your "clean area".

For the tempering, divide the chocolate into 3 equal parts. Place two of them in one bowl and keep the last one aside. Place the larger amount in the microwave and heat on maximum for 10 - 15 s at a time, taking out between each and stirring. The microwave time may vary, depending on its wattage, so better be careful, if the chocolate burns it will need to be thrown away and it will smell up the kitchen. At first it may appear that noting is happening with the chocolate buttons, but looks can be deceiving. Also keep checking the bowl temperature, it should be pretty much at body temperature. When the chocolate has melted fully, add the last part of the chocolate buttons and "massage" them in, they'll start to melt a little from the warmth of the already melted chocolate. This is called "seeding" the chocolate, meaning the already melted part has lost its tempering and you use the seeding chocolate buttons to start the tempering process. Now do a "paper test". Basically take a small strip of baking paper and dip one end and one side of it in the melted chocolate and set it aside, while continuing to stir the chocolate. If the chocolate is tempered, it should start setting within the minute. Look at it at different angles, there may be some streaks on it, like oil slicks. This means it's not fully tempered, but close.

One thing to keep in mind, if you see that the chocolate along the edges of the bowl begins to set, don't be tempted to scrape it off and try to blend in with the melted chocolate at the bottom of the bowl. Try to get as far as you can with the bit that is melted. Only then scrape down the bowl and repeat the tempering procedure if needed.

When the final lot of buttons stop melting and just appear like lumps, heat up the chocolate again in the microwave, this time in 5 s bursts or even less and keep checking and making the paper test until the lumps are completely gone. Do the paper test on the chocolate to make sure it's tempered still and wait until you are sure. I managed to ruin my tempering in the last melt and although I did the paper test, I didn't wait to see if it had set, but went ahead and spread a thin layer on my two transfer pieces and placed them onto the cake. If the chocolate isn't tempered, the pattern won't stick to the chocolate, at least not well. If this happens, quickly remove the ribbons from the cake.



Then cut out two new ribbon strips, slightly wider than the initial ones and repeat the process with cutting out the section of where they cross.

Cut out a second largish piece of baking paper. This will be the "dirty area" and should be placed next to the clean area. The bowl of melted, tempered chocolate should be placed on the other side of the dirty area.

Take the three strips for the ribbon and place on the dirty area, pattern side up. Drizzle some of the melted chocolate and spread it with an angled palette knife, thinly but not so that it is see-through. Then pick up a strip at a time and run two fingers along the two long edges to remove excess chocolate. Then carefully place with the chocolate side down over the cake and leave to set.

Next do the bow. Take two of the strips at a time, place on the dirty area, drizzle chocolate and spread in the same way as for the ribbon. Take up a strip at a time, run your fingers along the two long edges, to remove the excess chocolate, then carefully fold the strip into a loop so that the two short edges meet and stick together. Looking at the strip from the side, it will be a shaped like a droplet. Place it on it's side on the clean area to set, then repeat with the second strip. Then proceed with the other six strips. The reason these should be done two at a time is that by now the chocolate in the bowl should start getting thicker and begin to set. Once spread on a transfer strip, it will set even faster and can only be folded while still setting, after that it will just snap. Finally do the last small piece.

This concludes the main work with the tempered chocolate. It takes practice, as you need to work fast in a home environment. Temperate chocolate sets quickly. In fact as a comparison, you can do the paper test before you add the last third of the chocolate buttons and observe how it behaves. For starters it will take a long time for it to set, more than 10 minutes perhaps. Professionals have equipment that can maintain melted tempered chocolate indefinitely, in fact when I went to the Chocolate Festival in Stockholm in October 2010, they demonstrated what appeared to be an industrial sized, stand-alone double sink, but where the taps were producing dark and milk chocolate respectively, all tempered and ready to use. Now that's something!

Give the transfer sheets some more time just to make sure the chocolate sets and in the mean time, choose an actual fabric ribbon which will match the colours in the transfer sheets. It should be of the same width as the cake board and be long enough to go all the way around it. You will also need narrow double-sided sticky tape. Now glue the sticky tape along the side of the cake board, then peel it to reveal the second sticky side and glue on the fabric ribbon. The best way to do this is to keep the cake and board on the work surface and use it to help ensure that the fabric ribbon sticks on level. Also make sure that the edges of the fabric strip end up at the back of the cake, not the front.

So it is time to carefully peel off the acetate from both the three pieces of ribbon on the cake and all the pieces for the chocolate bow. The acetate has also the advantage of making the chocolate surface extra shiny, so investing in a few plain acetate sheets may also be well worth it.

How to assemble the bow? Well, a little more melted tempered chocolate is needed and a small paper cone for piping it and glue the pieces together. Once you have this ready, cut out a tiny hole at the tip of the cone, then start with the four larger bow parts, one at a time. Place it on the cake to see where it makes contact with the cake surface, then pick it up and dab a little melted chocolate onto the bow loop and place back on the cake surface. Repeat with the other three and it's OK to allow the flat edges overlap a little and place them in a cross.

Then take the smaller four bow loops and repeat carefully the procedure above, but this time shift them so that each small loop ends up between two large loops. Try to use as little of the melted chocolate as possible, but use the paper nozzle to get into the trickier places to make sure each loop is in contact with one or two others underneath. Finally glue on the smallest loop in the middle of the bow and allow the whole thing to set. If some of the strips have set in a funny way, you can carefully trim them with sharp scissors before fixing to the cake. And you end up with something like this.



With some of the left-over covering, I made a twisted rope to go around the bottom edge of the cake and hide a few things I wasn't happy with. This is actually a general trick to keep in mind - anyone can make mistakes. If it happens, don't try to cover it up and hide it, instead make a feature that will disguise it instead. For example you can see where I got some corn flour on the chocolate covering of my cake in the last photo of yesterday's blog entry. I offset the chocolate ribbon to cover it. I also didn't measure the length very well, the twisted rope around the cake hides this.

It's best to try and have a continuous twisted rope around the whole cake, but make sure that the ends meet at the back of the cake. As it is a twisted rope style, cut the two ends at an angle, then it is easier to disguise them where they meet. Also brush a little of the piping jelly along the cake edge before placing the rope there, so that it doesn't move or fall off even.

At this point I was quite happy with my cake, I was the slowest one in the class, but given that I've only covered two cakes with icing in the past and then not at all well, I did quite well and had very little to hide actually.

But there was one more technique to try - moulding. The teacher brought out a large box with small silicon moulds in various different shapes - flowers, butterflies, bees, sea shells etc. I selected a mould with ladybirds and one with flowers and took a walnut sized piece of white modelling chocolate and a similar piece of milk modelling chocolate. Kneaded each of the pieces until soft. Then I used a little trex (transparent vegetable fat) and greased up the inside of each mould. Then I pressed in modelling chocolate and made sure it filled the mould, before carefully wringing it out and set the shape aside to dry a little. This way, I created a few ladybirds and flowers.



Once they had dried a little, I brushed them with edible glue and stuck to the cake.



And this is how a lot can be hidden away. One thing to keep in mind though is that the different forms of chocolate will have slightly different colour, so be careful not to use too many of the techniques. I was happy with my cake before I stuck on the moulded decorations and would have stopped there, but this was for training purposes.

To round up, the sponge was very good and had a very dark brown colour and fine and moist texture. I was very careful with the butter cream. Unfortunately whoever made it had used salted butter and had not mixed it well, there were lumps of butter here and there and it did have a distinct savoury flavour, but not like a salt caramel piece, but just salty.

I had had a big dinner just before tasting the cake, so was not able to appreciate it fully, it felt too sweet, but Lundulph thought it was very well balanced. The in-laws had a lot of nice words to say about it too, which made me happy.

So, next steps are practice, practice, practice. Particularly on the tempering of chocolate and here is an interesting fact - tempered chocolate can be stored for a very long time in an air-tight container away from light and extreme temperatures. Untempered starts going off in a couple of weeks or so.

The other very important thing about the clean and dirty areas I mention above. Just let the chocolate set, then scrape it together and use again, don't throw away. The teacher explained that chocolate takes a lot of effort to produce, it would be terrible to waste it unnecessarily. This also means that it's sort of easy to practice - keep melting and tempering over and over again. So also avoid disposable piping bags, but use ones made from baking paper, so that left-over chocolate can be saved and used again.

Learning To Chocolate...

While browsing food blogs, I stumbled over a website of a sugarcraft supplier that also offers a variety of courses, among others a Chocolate Day. Basically it said, bring a cake and we'll teach you to decorate it. So how could I resist, I've been looking for chocolate courses for some time without any luck.

So last Saturday was a very longed for day. The cake recipe arrived in an e-mail and I made the cake on Thursday evening.

Rich Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

65 g cocoa powder
250 ml boiling water
a little grapeseed oil
125 g unsalted butter
275 g caster sugar
200 g plain flour
0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
0.25 tsp baking powder
2 eggs

Method

1. Mix the cocoa powder with the boiling water well, then allow to cool completely.


2. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees C. Brush lightly a 5 in (13 cm) square cake tin with grapeseed oil, both sides and bottom. Then line it with baking paper - first cut a 15 cm wide and 52 cm long strip. Fold one of the long sides at 2 cm in from the edge, then snip this strip at 2 cm intervals. Place this strip along the sides of the cake tin so the folded part is at the bottom of the tin. Then cut a square piece and place at the bottom of the tin.


3. Cream the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy.


4. Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder.


5. Crack the eggs into a small bowl and whisk them together with a fork a little.


6. Add alternatively a little of the eggs and a little of the flour mixture into the creamed butter and sugar. Once the eggs are in, continue with the cocoa mixture and mix thoroughly until everything has been well incorporated and has an even colour.


7. Pour in the mixture into the cake tin and bake until ready, about 1 h 15 minutes. Check with a skewer - it should come out clean.


8. Take out the cake and let it cool down in the tin for 40 minutes.
   
   Then remove it from the tin, if there is damp on the baking paper, wipe it, then wrap the cake, along with the baking paper, tightly with cling film or put in a bag and seal so that it is airtight and allow to cool completely.

I didn't quite follow the instructions, by the time I had the cake batter ready, it looked like it would be way too much for a 5 inch cake, so I ripped everything up and rigged up for a 6 inch cake. Indeed, the batter filled up the 6 inch tin to just above the middle.

The instructions said bake at 180 degrees C. When I checked the cake after 40 minutes, very little appeared to have happened, then at 1 h, the cake had risen like volcano, which I believe means it's baked at too hot temperature. Thus I state 160 degrees C above. As there is such a small amount of rising agents, this cake won't rise much and the 5 inch square is enough.

Now here comes the interesting bits. Unwrap the clingfilm and remove the baking paper from the side of the cake, but leave the bottom one on.

Slicing the cake. There are several ways to get the cake layers. If using a knife, try to keep the cutting hand and arm as steady as possible and gently make a sawing movement. With the other hand, turn the cake around in a circle, so that the knife makes a shallow cut around the cake at the chosen level. As you turn the cake, make the cut a little deeper and continue turning until the cake has been sliced. This way, a cleaner cut will be achieved overall. But a knife has two surfaces, which generate friction when the cake is cut. This makes it a bit harder to cut and increases the risk of creating crumbles in the cake. So it may be worth investing in a cake slicer, which has a wire. This means very much smaller surface to generate friction, and so much easier to cut, in addition to resulting in even cake layers. I suppose using a long filleting knife with some sort of spacers on either side of the cake should also give even layers. I removed the peak at the top of the cake, then sliced it in 3.

We were given chocolate butter cream to use as filling and the first thing to do is to place a little in the middle of the cake board and spread it thinly with a palette knife. To have a nice stable base for the cake, the middle cake slice should be used. The butter cream on the board will ensure that the cake won't move around while decorating it.

Next I added a layer of butter cream, not too much, as butter cream can be quite rich. Use the top cake slice for the second cake layer, if it is a little uneven due to baking, this can be levelled out with butter cream. I then added a further layer of butter cream and finished with the bottom slice of the cake, making sure to keep the bottom with the baking paper on top of course.

Now it is time to cover the sides and then the top with a thin layer of butter cream. This works as glue for the final covering and also allows getting a nice, even and regular shape. So, remove the final piece of the baking paper, then spread butter cream on the sides. The idea is that you can place your hand on the top while you do this. Finally do the same with the top of the cake. Try to get everything as smooth as possible.



For the icing we would use 2 parts of a Belgian covering paste (also known as chocolat plastique or modelling chocolate) and 1 part of chocolate regal ice. The reason for this is that the modelling chocolate tastes better, but can be a bit hard to work with, so adding some chocolate regal ice makes it more pliable. First knead through each of the two, then put together and knead until they are well blended.

Using a little corn flour on a clean table, roll out the covering. And here is a new trick I learned. Always roll away and towards yourself, this ensures that both hands will exert an even pressure on the rolling pin. Never be tempted to roll diagonally or sideways, then one arm will invariably press harder on the pin and the covering will become uneven. This of course means that the covering piece will need to be rotated regularly in order to roll it out into a roundish shape. This also serves the purpose of avoiding the situation when the covering is nicely rolled out and is stuck to the table. The corn flour doesn't soak in like icing sugar would do, but it is still important to use as little as possible, but whenever needed, rather than loads at the start. And be careful not to get any corn flour on the top surface, as it will leave stains. When turning the covering, use the rolling pin and flap one part of the mass over the pin, then lift the pin up and make the turn. Aim for a thickness of just under half a centimeter and make sure that the piece of covering is big enough cover the cake, the sides and out to the edges of the cake board.

Before placing the chocolate covering over the cake, make sure the sides of the cake board are clean and brush them with piping jelly (or gel). This will ensure that the covering sticks.

Again lift the covering with the help of the rolling pin, make sure that the clean side is on top. Then carefully, starting from the edge of the cake board, carefully place the covering over the cake. Start by making sure that the covering fits the top of the cake, then carefully make sure that the covering fits over the edges and then the sides. This takes some rubbing and wiggling. Finally smooth out the covering over the cake board. Trim along the board edge with a sharp knife, then use an icing smoother to get a nice finish. Because this is a chocolate covering, rubbing with the hands means that some of the cocoa butter will melt and give a nice shine on the surface, but careful not to over-do it and melt the covering.



Here is a good point to take a break.

Dinner Party

To celebrate that I am back in the UK and frankly to thank our dear neighbours who have been so kind to take care of Lundulph in my absence and have him over for dinner on several occasions, we invited them over to a dinner last Saturday.



Dinner parties are great - you get to clean the house thoroughly and put away the various bits and pieces that invariably lie around and you get to cook something fancier than the normal stuff to eat in front of the TV.

Not to mention that last Saturday was finally PYO premiere for asparagus. It is a bad year this year, the asparaguses are some 2 weeks late, but as I saw the announcement of the grand opening on the PYO web site, I decided on the steamed asparagus with the Bavarian egg sauce I've made before. I read the recipe before I started and opted for the second version. But instead of adding everything together and blending, I put together the dry ingredients (i. e. everything except the oil and vinegar) in the food processor and whizzed until things were chopped relatively finely, but where you could still make out the different bit - eggs, something nut-like and some green stuff. Only then did I add the olive oil and balsamic vinegar and ended up with something that looked a bit like coarse mustard. But it was sort of dip-able and still had some texture to it. Super!

But the main thing was the dessert - New York Cheese Cake, something I've wanted to do for a long time. The original recipe is here.

Ingredients

Base
85 g melted butter + a little more to brush the cake tin
140 g digestive biscuits
1 tbsp caster sugar
50 g toasted chopped hazelnuts

Filling
900 g full fat Philadelphia cheese
250 g caster sugar
3 tbsp plain flour
1 pinch salt
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
zest from 1 lemon, finely grated, about 2 tsp
1.5 tsp lemon juice
3 medium eggs + 1 yolk
200 ml sourcream

Glazing
225 ml sourcream
1 tbsp caster sugar
2 tsp lemon juice

Method

1. Line the bottom of a 23 cm springform with baking paper and pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C.


2. Melt the butter on a gentle heat, just enough to melt it, not to boil.


3. Place the digestive biscuits in a food processor and blitz until they are down to fine crumb.


4. Remove the cutting blade from the processor, then stir in the sugar and hazelnuts.


5. Work the melted butter into the dry mixture, then press the blend into the bottom of the springform, then smooth out, so that the layer is as even as possible. This will be about half a cm thick.


6. Bake for 10 minutes, then take out and let cool. Turn up the heat to 240 degrees C.
   
   


7. Using a mixer and a big bowl, first soften up the Philadelphia cheese. This may require stopping and clearing the mixer whisks a few times.


8. On low speed, gradually add the sugar, flour and salt. Make sure they are well incorporated.


9. Continue with adding the vanilla extract, lemon zest and juice.


10. Add the eggs and yolk, one at a time and mix them well in.


11. Finally add the sourcream. The filling should be smooth and light and not too airy.


12. Brush the sides of the springform with a little melted butter, then pour in the cheese filling.


13. Place in the oven for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat to 150 degrees C and bake for a further 25 minutes. If you shake the springform a little, the cake should wobble in the middle.


14. Turn off the oven and allow the cake to cool down inside for a couple of hours. The surface may crack on top, that's not a problem.


15. When the cheesecake is completely cooled down, stir together the final sourcream, sugar and lemon, then pour the glazing over the cake and with a spatula spread it all the way out to the edges.


16. Cover and chill the cake in the fridge for at least 8 h before serving.

I thought to compensate for adding hazelnuts and used 100 g of butter, this turned out to be an extremely bad idea, as I had butter oozing out while the cake was baking and it kept oozing out afterwards as well, despite that I tried to soak up as much as I could with kitchen tissue. I have a bad feeling that even if I used 85 g, it would still have oozed out.

I also didn't use a springform, but my adjustable cake ring placed on top of a baking sheet lined with baking paper. This meant that not only did the surplus butter ooze out, but also some of the cheese filling, a lot more than I would have liked in fact.

But it baked OK and took a bit longer than 2 h to cool down completely. But I'm proud to say that the surface didn't crack.

I poured the glaze over the cake and spread it to the edges and into the fridge the cake went for its designated 8 h of chilling.

Although one of the neighbours blatantly declared that pudding was not for him, he was not able to resist having a piece. Lundulph had two, before I confessed that there was Philadelphia in the cake. So needless to say, the cake was fantastic, so creamy, not too sweet and with a lovely tinge of lemon and the sourness of the cream. The texture was quite fantastic too, I'm thinking it might be suitable to use for macaroons.

And I'm very proud of thinking of adding toasted hazelnuts to the biscuit mixture, it added an extra dimension to the cheesecake.

The Third Card...

The third card I picked out from the Ye Olde Recipe Collection was Slow Cooked Venison with Red Wine and Rosemary. In the past I generally have been successful when cooking with wine and this dish read simple enough, so why not?

An early hurdle was to get hold of venison. Sadly neither of the local supermarkets had any, nor did I manage to get to the butcher's before they closed to ask. Thus the Chantenay carrots and huge button mushrooms got to sit in the fridge for a few days on their own, until Lundulph suggested we use the moose roast we had in the freezer. One of the trophies I brought home from Sweden, Lundulph had not been able to think of a way to cook it. And it's game too and it's a fairly near relative of the deer that provide venison.

Said and done, moose was thawed and the casserole finally cooked last Friday. Against instructions on the card, I kept the carrots whole (that's why I bought Chantenay) and I added mushrooms, since only carrots and onions would not be enough.

Ingredients

1 kg moose roast cut in 3 cm chunks
3 tbsp olive oil
500 g Chantenay carrots
1 large onion, coarsely cut in 2 cm pieces
300 g large button mushrooms, peeled and quartered
75 cl (1 bottle) red wine
5 dl chicken stock
the leaves of 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, chopped
4 tbsp tomato puree
Salt and pepper

Method

1. Pat the meat chunks dry, then heat up the olive oil on high heat in a large pan.


2. Brown the meat chunks in the olive oil, in 2 - 3 batches, so that they don't crowd each other in the pan. Turn now and then so they get a nice colour all over and remove when done to a large casserole dish with a lid.


3. When all the meat is done, add the carrots, onions and mushrooms to the pan. Fry until they start to soften a little. Remember to stir from time to time.


4. Transfer the vegetables to the casserole dish as well and stir in to mix with the meat.


5. Add the wine, chicken stock, rosemary and tomato puree and bring to the boil.


6. Cover the casserole and let simmer on low heat for 1.5 h. Stir a couple of times.


7. Remove the lid and let the casserole simmer a further 30 minutes to reduce the liquids.


8. Finally add salt and pepper to taste.


9. Before serving, use the stirring spoon to shred the meat a little.

The casserole looked pretty and smelt very nice, but when we tasted it, it tasted very strongly of tomato and was very sweet, so we were disappointed. In general it could have done with more herbs and spices, the way it was, it felt like there were gaps in the overall flavour palette.

The meat on the other hand was fabulously tender and shredded very nicely.

The above amounts should be enough for 6 people. Looking at the comments people have left on the Waitrose website, I think that it would do better with mashed or boiled potatoes, rather than pasta.

So not a recipe to keep, in fact I think Lundulph may already have tidied it away to the recycling bin.

I didn't take any pictures either, though given that we didn't like this dish much, it's not a big deal.

Lundulph's Surprise

Heading for the early May Bank Holiday, I thought I would make a nice surprise for Lundulph by making Scotch Eggs.

Normally he will go quite poetic about these things and we always buy a pack for various family outings and I've long been thinking about trying my hand at them. I wouldn't dream of eating shop-bought ones, they just look scary to me. Would I brave trying the ones I made myself?

So I went for Heston's Scotch Eggs, the second card I picked out from Ye Olde Recipe Collection, in my latest search for food inspiration.

Swapped out ingredient is the chives, I skipped them, since I had a perfectly nice bunch of salad onions at home ready to be eaten.

Ingredients

2 fat salad onions
450 g pork sausagemeat stuffing
1 heaped tsp of dried thyme
45 g French's mustard
0.5 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp water
salt and pepper
10 medium eggs
50 ml milk
4 tbsp plain flour
125 g dry large breadcrumbs
grapeseed oil for frying

Method

1. Slice and then finely chop the salad onions.


2. Mix the onions together with the sausagemeat stuffing, thyme, mustard, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper and water thoroughly, then weigh the lot and divide into 8 equal patties.
   
   Cover with cling film and chill for 20 minutes.


3. Place 8 of the eggs in a saucepan, cover up to 2 cm above with water and place on a high heat and bring to the boil.


4. As soon as the water boils, set a timer for 1 minute 45 seconds. Once the timer runs out, remove the saucepan from the heat, pour out the hot water and pour cold water over the eggs. Let it pour for a few minutes until they have cooled down enough to handle.


5. Carefully tap the eggs with a knife to break up the shells, then peel off. Rinse the eggs to remove any small pieces of shell sticking to them, then pat dry.


6. Break the remaining two eggs in a bowl and gently whisk together with the milk. Place the plain flour in a second bowl and the bread crumbs in a third bowl.
   
   Line up flour, then eggs, then breadcrumbs. Season the flour with salt and pepper.


7. Pour the oil in the saucepan and heat up on medium high heat. The idea is to simulate a deep fryer, so there should be oil to about 3 cm depth. Heat up the oil on medium-high.


8. Prepare a grill pan with a rack, by placing aluminium foil at the bottom, then several layers of kitchen tissues and the rack on top of the tissue.


9. Prepare a small bowl of water, then take out the meat patties from the fridge. Wet your hands, then take a patty at a time and flatten it along the palm of a hand.


10. Place one egg in the mince mixture, then close the hand to cover the egg. Gently and carefully keep moving the mince so that the egg is completely covered with it.
    
    Don't be tempted to roll between the palms of the hands like with buns or meatballs, this will only break up the coating.


11. Now, roll the first Scotch egg in the flour, then in the egg mixture and finally in the breadcrumbs, then carefully place in the small saucepan to fry.


12. The oil should be very hot and start bubbling as the Scotch egg goes in. With a slotted spoon, carefully maneuver the egg around so that it fries all around.


13. Fry only until the egg gets a nice golden brown colour all over, shouldn't be more than a minute.


14. Take out with the slotted spoon and let drip off as much as possible over the saucepan, then place on the rack of the grill pan. The kitchen tissue will soak up any leftover fat drips.


15. Repeat with the other Scotch eggs. The dipping procedure is quite messy, so try to do it with only one hand, leaving the other one clean for the frying.


16. If you need to top up on the oil, do so, but wait until it has heated up well before resuming the frying.


17. When all 8 Scotch eggs are done, clean off your hand, then remove the kitchen tissue from under the roasting rack.
    
    


18. Replace the roasting rack in the roasting tin, then put the eggs in the oven to finish cooking, about 10 minutes.

The idea is to serve these hot and freshly cooked and hopefully with the yolks still a little runny. This didn't quite work out for me, next time I might try a different approach to boiling the eggs - not from cold, but from hot, that is place the eggs in the saucepan and pour boiling water on them from the kettle.

I served with boiled Jersey Royals which are now in season, some lovely wine ripened tomatoes and mini pickled gherkins, the last of which worked particularly well with the Scotch eggs. Yes, this is definitely a keeper as recipes go, though given the amount of fat required, I won't be making it too often. Possibly I can get away with even less fat than I used too. The trick of using a small saucepan and doing one at a time was quite good. I was just about able to prepare the next egg, while one was frying.

I had some flour, eggs and breadcrumbs left over afterwards and mixed them all together, then dripped into the fat, while it was still on the hob. Then I kept stirring for a couple of minutes, before removing onto more kitchen tissue. This was just an experiment, since I would be throwing away both the fat and the dipping bits. And a good thing I did too, it turned out rather nice, though it remained quite pale. With the seasoning I had something that can be compared to savoury French toast in the shape of popcorn. It could make an alternative to croutons in a salad or just as a snack. Well, I liked the taste of it anyway. Health-obsessed Lundulph just tut-tut-ed at me.

Back in the UK

So, after a year and a half in Sweden, I have returned to the UK. Not really how I had planned it, but things don't really go that way anyway.

On the plus side, I get to work from home and I thought this would mean I get a bit more time to cook.

After 3 weeks, I can tell you, this is not the case, I work also during the time I would have used for travel to and from the office. And developing a new routine, I haven't felt any inspiration in the kitchen at all. Just remembering my old ropes takes an effort and stopping Lundulph from behaving like he's still living on his own requires overtime.

Thus, to kick-start things, I thought why not go through Ye Olde Recipe Collection? And I did, picked out 3 cards and went shopping.

The first card I selected was Sliced Oriental Duck with pomegranate sauce.

Now, I'm a bit divided when it comes to duck - I've had both good and bad experience with it, but it would make a difference to our regular staple protein source. Being an old recipe card, the duck pieces listed in the recipe were not in stock, I went for the duck breast and with skin.

There was a new spice involved - Sichuan pepper, very exciting!

And of course, I doubled the recipe, so that I wouldn't have to cook again in the next couple of days.

Ingredients
2 fresh pomegranates
2 tbsp redcurrant sauce with port
4 duck breasts
2 tsp Sichuan Pepper
2 tsp Chinese Five Spice powder
2 tsp caster sugar
4 tsp olive oil
200 g fresh thin rice noodles

Method

1. Cut the pomegranates in half, then carefully tease out the seeds, discarding the pith and membranes. Careful, they are full of bright red juice that happily squirts a lot further than is necessary and that stains even more.


2. Save a handful of the seeds for decoration and place the rest in a food processor or blender and whizz for a couple of minutes.


3. Place a sieve over a small saucepan and pour the pomegranate pulp into the sieve. Using a spoon, stir the pulp and push through as much of the juice as possible and discard the rest.


4. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C and place a small roasting tin inside to heat up as well.


5. Remove the skin and the fatty layer from the duck breasts, this should be relatively easy, if a bit icky. Then place thee meat on a plate.


6. Crush the Sichuan pepper in a mortar and pestle or grind coarsely in a spice grinder, then mix with the Chinese Five Spice and caster sugar. Rub into the duck breasts.


7. Heat up the olive oil in a frying pan, that's large enough so the duck breasts aren't crowded. Brown the duck breasts for a couple of minutes on each side, to get a nice colour and to seal the meat.


8. Place the duck breasts in the pre-heated roasting tin and let roast in the oven for 20 - 25 minutes, depending on how done you want them.


9. In the mean time, bring the pomegranate juice to the boil and let it simmer down to a syrup, about 10 minutes.


10. Place the rice noodles in another saucepan, boil up water in the kettle, then pour over the noodles to cover. Simmer gently for a few minutes to warm through.


11. Clean, trim and slice the onions, use also the green parts, they are just as tasty and will add nice colour to the dish.


12. When the pomegranate syrup has formed, add 2 tbsp of the redcurrant sauce and stir in well and let simmer for a further 2-3 minutes.


13. When the duck breasts are ready, take out of the oven and let rest for 5 minutes.


14. Pour off the water from the rice noodles and lay up as base on four plates.


15. When the duck breasts are rested, slice each thinly and layer over the noodles. Drizzle pomegranate sauce over and sprinkle the spring onions and pomegranate seeds and serve.

To be honest, this didn't quite work for me and Lundulph. On the whole the combination of fruit and meat is tricky, unless it is something sour and tannic like cranberries or lingonberries. So I don't think this will be a repeat recipe.

In repeat meals, I poured the jus from the duck into the sauce, I think that may have helped a little, but still the whole thing was too sweet. Maybe it was because of the redcurrant sauce, who knows.

The Sichuan pepper was interesting - it smelt quite strongly in the jar, though not unpleasant. It seemed very dry, but was quite difficult to crush with the mortar and pestle, I added the caster sugar to help with that, but it didn't seem to make much difference.

I also over-cooked the duck I think, it wasn't as pink as I would have liked it, but I followed the original recipe, and started with the duck breasts first and the sauce later, so all of the roasting time was wasted on dismantling the pomegranates.

I recommend using pomegranates as a sweet snack in front of the TV. Just cut a lid off at the "crown" end and place in a large bowl lined with kitchen tissue. Then you can sit and watch a movie while slowly peeling the outer skin and prising off the seeds one or two at a time.

Last of the lamb

I'm sad to say that last week-end we used up the final bits of the lamb I bought just before Christmas. Where did it all go?

But Lundulph was coming to Sweden, so I thought we could make something rather festive. The bit that was left was the saddle and it didn't look like it would be enough for 5 people, so my Mum also dug out a steak of some sort.

I decided to make an old but very tasty recipe.

But being part of Ye Olde Recipe Collection, it had some very shop-specific ingredients, that I was not able to get hold of. Like Chinese Five Spice Paste.

So I researched it on the internet a bit and found out the ingredients. Based on that, I looked around for recipes for the paste and found many useful suggestions. Basically start with Chinese Five Spice dry mixture and mix with some wet ingredients into a paste. I managed to get hold of a jar ready mixed at the English Shop in Stockholm. Yes, there really is such a thing!

Chinese Five Spice paste
Ingredients
4 tsp Chinese Five Spice powder
0.5 tsp salt
1 tsp smoked paprika
1.5 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp rapeseed oil
4 tbsp tomato puree

Method
Carefully mix all the ingredients the night before the paste is needed. Cover and keep refrigerated. The above makes about 1 dl. Then just follow the recipe. This way you can be a bit more generous when coating the lamb too.

That Old Sourdough...

Well, you can imagine my surprise and joy when I found out that one of the supermarkets has started selling ready made sourdough. Not just that, it also claimed to be ready to use. Interesting!

So at the first opportunity I went to get some - they had two types, wheat sourdough and rye sourdough.

Since I'd not worked with rye sourdough before, and it's been a while with the wheat one too, I opted to try the wheat first.

Reading the instructions on the lid, it said "add yeast". Well, what's the point in using sourdough then, eh?!? But thinking things through, it occurred to me that the sourdough was just for flavouring. Would this mean that it wouldn't be alive? The best before date was several weeks in the future, that's a bit suspicious, even if sourdough can survive a long time, how would it be "ready to use" at any point in time up until that date?

So, I went for what I've done in the past with Monty - I fed it. As I opened it, it was runny like Bulgarian boza. It also smelt rather weird. Oh well, in with water, in with flour. I didn't measure very thoroughly either, but just tried to obtain a very thick batter consistency. Then in the oven it went, the oven was still a little warm after a previous bake. And off I went shopping.

I came back several hours later and noticed that there had been a rise to the double in the jar, but it had sank back to the original amount.

Maybe here I made my mistake - I fed it again. This time it smelt a bit more like Monty used to do, and it was bubbly, so I thought everything was fine and let it stand for a further few hours.

Sadly, there was no further rise at all after the second feed. I had thickened it further, to reach the regular consistency of Monty. So there was plenty of food for the wild yeasts. It still bubbled, but didn't rise.

But I had lost patience and made the dough anyway, and let it rise in the oven again, though this time I set the oven to 30 degrees C to help it out. This seemed to do a trick, because the dough did rise nicely.

I took it out and shaped it into 3 small loaves and left it to proof overnight in cool room temperature, about 18 degrees C.

The next morning, I looked at it and it hadn't moved a bit. Dang! Well, never mind, into the oven it'll go.

So I baked it and it did make a heroic attempt at oven spring, but in the end my loaves remained the same size as when they were raw.

And when I cut it, I had the texture of marzipan.



Flavour-wise, it was very good, I'd mixed in sesame and poppy seeds, but this wasn't bread and I had 3 brick-like loaves of it. Bah!

On the plus side, heated up a bit in the microwave and dipped in kyopoolu was totally fab.

I won't be doing anything with the rye sourdough, I'm leaving it to my Mum to play with. The reason for this is that I'm moving back to the UK and my lovely hubby Lundulph at the beginning of April. Quite looking forward to that and getting on with more cooking and baking. I have so many new ideas that I've noted down on various bits of paper, hopefully I won't lose any of them.

Vanilla Macarons

At my Glögg Party last year, Dr Cutie gave me a book on macarons.

Not only did it have lovely photos of those fab sweets, it also had some very useful advice on how to succeed.

For starters, it recommends that the ground almonds and icing sugar are mixed together and run in a blender in order to get it as finely ground as possible.

Another useful tip is to fold in the dry mixture in three parts, I think this allows for a bit more control over the whole thing. It also said that after the last part has been incorporated, the meringue mixture will likely be quite stiff, so one should just continue to fold until it loosens up a little and is ready when the mixture runs down in a thick ribbon from the spatula into the bowl, where it will stay in shape for about half a minute or so.

The most crucial piece of advice is that once the macarons have been piped and banged/dropped to flatten, they must be rested for about 30 minutes. I had this instruction in my patisserie master class, but I failed to realise why this part is so important and I haven't come across this explained elsewhere. The reason is that during this rest, the macaron surface will start drying out and form a skin. Once it can be touched without sticking to the finger, the macarons can go in the oven. This will help form the crunchy surface and force any steam trying to escape to go out through the edges and thus form the curly bit on the sides.



And of course the recommendation of doing a few batches to understand how one's oven works and find the right temperature and baking time.

I guess I also have gained some experience in working with meringue to have a better feel for the whole thing too.

So yesterday, Bip and I made the first recipe in the book - classic vanilla macarons.

Ingredients

1.75 dl finely ground almonds
2.5 dl icing sugar
2 medium egg whites
0.5 dl caster sugar
0.5 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Put the almonds and icing sugar in a blender and process for no more than half a minute.


2. Sift the mixture into a bowl. Return any large pieces to the blender and blend again and sift.


3. In a large glass or metal bowl, whisk the egg whites to soft peaks. Then while whisking slowly add the caster sugar until stiff peaks and a glossy meringue forms. Add the vanilla extract at the very end, whisking just enough so it is mixed in. I demonstrated to Bip that you're supposed to turn the bowl upside-down over your head as a test.


4. Now carefully add one third of the dry mixture and use a spatula to fold into the meringue. Once fully incorporated, add the second third etc.


5. Once all dry mixture is fully mixed in and the meringue is just a little runny, prepare a piping bag with a round nozzle and transfer the meringue into it.


6. Line two baking sheets with clean baking paper and pipe small blobs onto them. They should spread out on their own.


7. Once all the mixture has been piped, either pick up the whole baking sheet some 5 cm over the worktop and drop it down or bang the baking sheet with the palm of your hand, so that trapped air bubbles come up to the surface of the macarons.


8. Pop these gently with a needle, so they don't bake into the macarons later.


9. Now leave the macarons to stand for about 30 minutes so that they form a skin. It should be possible to touch them without getting meringue mixture onto your fingers.


10. Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees (or 130 degrees if fan assisted), then bake one sheet at a time for 10 - 15 minutes (fan assisted will be around 10 minutes).


11. Take out of the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes, then carefully remove to a wire rack to cool completely. If the top and bottom separate, the macarons can go into the oven for a couple of more minutes.

The recipe recommended to use a vanilla flavoured butter cream, but Bip and I opted for chocolate mousse of the Angel Delight type.

I was so happy when the macarons turned out like they were supposed to! Although next time I won't use the large piping tip, it was too big and my macarons ended up just a little too large to be eaten in one bite and with the filling so soft, they were hard to eat. A smaller tip will allow more control.

I also need to take more care when sifting the ground almonds, it was still not sufficiently fine and I had a few lumps here and there. I did use the blender to grind whole blanched almonds. The problem is that if you run the blender for too long, the almond fat melts and forms a paste rather than flour like substance. Next time I'll try using the coffee grinder, that might give better results.

But I feel very proud to have sussed the trick, leaving only a couple of minor adjustments to do in order to get things perfect.

There are 29 more recipes in the book and the quantities are all based on 2 egg whites, which result in about 20 complete macarons.

Myskväll

Yesterday my Mum casually mentioned that there are loads of avocados in the house that needed to be eaten fairly urgently, so I suggested we make guacamole.



I've never done this before and have wanted to try my hand at it. My friend Boncey has quite a knack for it, so I have a very high watermark to hit.

What I have noticed is that avocados sold in Sweden are tiny in comparison to the ones you get in the UK. I'm not sure why, but such is the case, at least at the shops which I've been to. So I decided that two Swedish avocados would count as one. This means I had 4 big avocados to use up (or 8 tiny ones).

A quick google on the food pages of the BBC gave several interesting results. The one I settled on is from The Hairy Bikers. They have proven reliable to me in the past and I do quite like them. And once again, I was not able to follow a new recipe to the dot, so here is my take on it. The original recipe can be found here.

Ingredients

1 small very hot dry chilli, seeds removed, then crushed
2 handfulls of fresh coriander, chopped
4 ripe plum tomatoes, diced
2 small red onions, coarsely diced
2 tbsp lime juice
3 tbsp water
salt
4 large ripe avocados

Method

1. Place everything except the avocados in a blender and process until a pulp, though not entirely smooth.
   
   


2. In a serving bowl, scoop out the avocados and mash with a fork.
   
   


3. Pour in the tomato mixture and stir in to combine. It is now ready to serve.

The amount of salt depends on what the guacamole will be used for - we were going to have a "myskväll", which means a cosy evening, mostly in front of the TV. And my Mum had bought tortilla chips to dip. Thus I didn't put much salt in it.

We ended up with a really large bowl. As it turned out, there was no need to worry that we wouldn't be able to eat it - we managed to put away about two-thirds of it straight away. We being me, Mum and my Sister. In fact, Bip was well impressed with how tasty it is - she does guacamole, but generally uses spice mixes which she stirs into the mashed avocado and that is of course a bit different to what we did yesterday.

Although I did not get anywhere near Boncey's wonderful guacamole, this is definitely a repeat recipe, and I'll try to use fresh chillies next time. Mum thought it had too much coriander, though I thought it was OK. But I will reduce the amount of tomatoes, they were too prominant for me.

Semla Pops

Yes, it is once again Fat Tuesday and while toying with the idea of baking semlas, and weighing against the fact that I had lots of the buns left over from last year, the lovely ladies at HR (where I work) went ahead and ordered several crates for the whole office to celebrate.

So my mind went on spinning - moving down to a smaller scale, maybe on a lolly stick, hm?



And so I got the idea of a semla pop. And I googled it, there was nothing of the kind.

But of course semla buns are from yeast dough, there is no way I could get them that small. And then be able to scoop out the crumb in the middle in order to fill with marzipan etc.

Then it struck me - choux buns! They pretty much have a hole in them per definition. And I wouldn't be fiddling with marzipan, crumbs and milk etc for the filling, just push in a small pinch of marzipan, squirt a little whipped cream, put the lid on and dust with icing sugar. The whipped cream, was just that - whipped cream with a couple of tsp of icing sugar added to it.

And that's precisely what I did and even my parents liked them, to the point that we put away the 9 pops I made straight away, leaving barely enough time for photos.

So this is what I did. One batch of choux buns of previously tried and tested recipe. It ended up a bit runnier than I expected, not sure why and as I piped slightly smaller blobs, I ended up with about 75 of them.

Once they had cooled completely, I carefully cut off the tops of a few as the semla lids.

Into the cavity I placed some marzipan, about the size of a hazelnut and pushed a lolly stick through.



As you can see this time I had polystyrene pieces, which I saved after the candles on Falbala's latest birthday cake. A little Blu-Tack worked a treat.

It occurred to me that I should have cut the lids into triangles, but with my Mum and Dad standing next to me and not really succeeding in waiting for me to finish constructing my little semla pops, I didn't bother.

On further thought, the lolly sticks aren't really necessary, the mini-semlas work quite nicely as bite-sized treats and as it turned out, survived a night in the fridge without problems, which was a massive bonus. I decided not to take the risk of a second night in that cold place and ate the few remaining survivors for breakfast the next day.

My original plan was to make the whole lot into semla pops and take to work, sadly I fell the victim of this year's heavy duty flu and ended up working from home most of last week, so as only bonus I got to keep all the little semlas.

As for the flu, I've mostly kicked it, it seems, but according to the Swedish news, it's the worst epidemic in 20 years.

Alla Hjärtans Dag

Yes, it is Valentine's Day, in Swedish the day translates to "the day of all hearts". And on a recent trip to our local mall, I spotted these adorable pink heart-shaped sprinkles and couldn't stop myself from buying them. Pathetic, I know.



Since the chocolate muffins I made for the cookie monster cup cakes were so fluffy and light and moist and generally extremely tasty, I decided to make them again, but a double dose this time, as I planned to take some to work. You see, my colleague, Long Tall Sally, keeps grumbling occasionally over that I didn't bring any of the cookie monsters to work.

The muffin recipe is here. From the double dose I got 28.

For the topping, I had some mascarpone left over and wanted to use it up, so I searched for suggestions on the vast source of inspiration that is the Internet and found this recipe that seemed very appealing.

I still ended up buying another packet of mascarpone and as I was taking the cupcakes to work, I decided against the madeira.

Ingredients

250 g mascarpone cheese
40 g icing sugar
190 ml whipping cream

Method

1. Whisk together the mascarpone and icing sugar until it is soft.


2. In a separate bowl, whip the cream to medium peaks.


3. Stir together carefully until well incorporated.


4. Cover with clingfilm and place in the fridge until needed.

Once the muffins were ready and completely cooled down, I piped as much cream as I dared. The above amount was actually just right.

The mistake I made was to sprinkle the little hearts immediately afterwards. By the morning they had soaked up some moisture from the cream and had started dissolving. Such a beginner's mistake to make.



Then came another problem - transportation. My friend Patsy has invested in a special carrying box, but there was no way I could borrow it now. Gah! So out with all ice cream boxes and then fit in as many as possible without destroying them. I managed to take 14 with me to work and they certainly seemed popular, despite they were pink and dissolved. In fact, Long Tall Sally asked to take all of them.

As always, my piping capabilities leave a lot to be desired, but the mascarpone cream was fantastic and combined very well with the muffins. Definitely a repeat treat.

Tiramisu Cake

Yesterday it was my Mum's birthday and after some discussions we agreed to make a tiramisu cake for her.



Discussing further, I mentioned that I fancied trying a particular cake shape. My Mum disagreed - she wanted a BIG cake. But when I came to make it, she was busy doing something else, so I took the opportunity to do what I'd decided to do anyway.

The cake shape in question is a giant brioche basically, but made from pyrex and is also useful for a Charlotte. Another thing on my to try list.

The recipe for the mascarpone cream comes from a book on Italian food, something I purchased for my Mum at least 20 years ago, long before the people of Sweden knew what pesto is.

The below results in quite a lot, if you're making portion sized tiramisu, only do half of this, it should be enough for 8 - 10 people.

Ingredients

6 tbsp dark rum
2 tbsp Cointreau
2 dl cold strong coffee
30+ ladyfinger biscuits
15+ walnut "amaretti" biscuits
800 g mascarpone
4 eggs, separated
10 tbsp icing sugar
100 g coarsely grated dark chocolate

Method

1. Mix half of the rum and half of the Cointreau with the coffee in a shallow and wide bowl, to allow for a quick dip of the ladyfinger biscuits.


2. Line the big brioche dish with dry ladyfinger bisquits and some of the small amaretti biscuits at the bottom and set aside.
   
   


3. Turn out the mascarpone into a separate bowl and stir to loosen.


4. Add the egg yolks, the remaining rum and Cointreau and the icing sugar and stir together well.


5. In a clean metal or glass bowl, whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks.


6. Carefully fold the whites into the mascarpone mix and incorporate well.


7. Pour a little of the mascarpone mixture into the brioche bowl, just enough to cover the amaretti biscuits at the bottom. Spread so as not to leave air bubbles.


8. Dip some amaretti biscuits into the coffee mixture briefly and place on top of the cream, try to fit in as many as possible.


9. Spoon another layer of the mascarpone cream to cover, then quickly dip some ladyfinger biscuits and fit over the cream.
   
   


10. Repeat one more time until the brioche bowl is filled, finish with a layer of ladyfinger biscuits.


11. Cover with clingfilm and let stand overnight.


12. Before serving, if any of the outer ladyfinger biscuits are sticking out, trim them so that they are level with the bottom layer of the cake. Then turn over the brioche bowl onto a serving plate and carefully remove from the tiramisu cake.
    
    


13. Grate the dark chocolate and sprinkle on top.

Because I wanted this thing to stand and not collapse like my other creations, I opted to keep some of the ladyfinger biscuits dry. This worked, but the cake felt a bit on the dry side, so should perhaps have dipped some of them.

I also think the balance between rum and Cointreau was off - too much rum, not enough Cointreau, and so it felt quite boozy and not in a good way, at least I didn't think so. Next time I'll adjust it - maybe equal amounts would be better.

I also had quite a lot of mascarpone cream left over, so I made 6 portion glasses with a ladyfinger each.

Looking at my photos, I should have saved the cream and used it to make the outward appearance a bit smoother, before sprinkling the chocolate.

Needless to say we put away half of this on the day of celebration and my parents worked through the remainder on the following day.

But I'm glad that my idea worked and that the cake was able to stand on its own.

Bread from Caucasus

While I was a housewife in 2010, I followed several blogs and gathered quite a lot of interesting recipes. More than I have had time to try out.



One of these comes from TheFreshLoaf and is a bread recipe from the Caucasus. The photo there looked so pretty and the technique seemed quite intriguing, I'd even gone to Borough Market to get hold of Sumac, a spice I'd never heard of before.

I haven't baked for some time (it took forever to eat all the cupcakes!), so I thought I'd finally try making this fascinating bread.

Despite relatively thorough preparations, it turned out that I didn't have all the listed ingredients and had to improvise.

Ingredients

600 g strong white flour
14 g instant yeast
10 g granulated sugar
10 g salt
0.5 dl vegetable oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
3 dl water
140 g red pesto
sumac
olive oil

Method

1. Put all the dry ingredients in the bowl of the mixer.


2. Mix together well, then pour in the oil and the vinegar and the water and continue mixing until a supple, non-sticky dough forms. If it feels a bit stiff, add a bit more water, if too soft, add a little more flour.


3. Cover the bowl and set to rise in a warm place until double in size.


4. In the mean time, cut out a rough circle, slightly larger than your springform, then fit onto the bottom part and clip into the other. Brush the sides and bottom with olive oil.
   
   


5. Flour your work surface and your rolling pin and take out the dough.


6. Flatten it out and start rolling to a sheet, as thin as possible and into a rectangular shape, I managed to get it about 3-4 mm.


7. Spread a thin layer of the pesto, leaving the outer 1 - 1.5 cm, then sprinkle a little sumac all over.


8. Carefully roll up along one of the long sides, as tightly as possible.


9. Then cut lengthwise through the middle of the roll, using a sharp, non-serrated knife. Do not saw with the knife. It should be two very long roll halves.


10. Place the two halves so that they form an X and with the cut surface upwards.


11. Braid the two parts together by taking the two bottom ones and crossing over the top ones. Twist so that the cut surface always remains upwards as you go along.


12. Tuck in the ends when done, or pinch together.You should now have a rope-like thing.
    
    


13. Now starting with the thinner end of the dough, roll it carefully sideways into a spiral, like a huge cinnamon bun.


14. Carefully transfer the bread to the springform and let proof.


15. Pre-heat the oven to 210 degrees C.


16. Brush with some more olive oil and sprinkle with more sumac on top.


17. Bake in the middle of the oven for 10 minutes, then turn down the heat to 180 degrees and let bake for a further 30 - 40 minutes until done. If it goes dark on the top, place a sheet of baking paper to prevent it from burning.

Although my roll was fairly long, it appears it wasn't long enough and I need to practice the braiding and see if I can work out a different way of doing it that will give a more attractive result. There was no way I could bend it into a spiral shape, let alone getting it to fit into the springform in any way at all, but anyway, I continued.

I let it cool on a wire rack after it had finished baking and it still didn't look very appealing. My Mum thought it looked like a kozunak,
the way they sometimes do them in Bulgaria. Except that this was far from sweet.

But when I cut it open, it looked like this



and I was kind of sold on it. So pretty!

Taste-wise it was quite OK, there seemed to be a persistent smell of vinegar around it, and sumac also having a sour flavour, maybe that added to the whole, but it wasn't obvious in the taste, just the smell.

I'll try this again sometime, but with traditional pesto and make sure to roll even longer, so I get a nice braid.

My first cupcakes

Finally the time was ripe for me to try my hand at cupcakes, I had all the ingredients and all the tools and spent a lovely Sunday afternoon making and decorating. I see the attraction and I can very easily see myself investing in a full kit of tools for sugarcraft. Must be careful.



I spotted the inspiration for these here. Sadly no recipes were provided, so I had to find these elsewhere.
For the basic muffins, I chose a recipe from the BBC.

Chocolate Muffins, 12-13 pcs
Ingredients

140 g plain flour
30 g unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
0.5 tsp salt
1 tsp instant coffee
2 tsp cold water
60 g unsalted butter at room temperature
225 g granulated sugar
2 medium eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
160 ml semi-skimmed milk

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C and line a muffin tin with paper cases of 5 cm diameter at the bottom. Or a flat baking sheet, but place each paper case into 2 aluminium cases, to ensure they don't sprawl out sideways, but bake upwards.
2. 
   
3. Mix together flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and salt well, then sift to get airy and remove lumps and set aside.


4. In a glass, mix together the instant coffee and water.


5. Whisk together the butter and sugar until well combined. Then add the eggs, one at a time and whisk in well.


6. Add the coffee, followed by the vanilla extract and half of the dry mixture.


7. Pour in the milk and incorporate and add the remainder of the dry mixture. The batter should be quite runny and feel and taste a bit like Angel Delight.


8. Pour into the paper cases, up to about 1 cm from the top edge.


9. Bake in the middle of the oven for 20 - 25 minutes, check with a toothpick after 20 minutes for readiness - the toothpick should come out clean.


10. Take out and let cool for 10 - 25 minutes, then remove to a wire rack and allow to cool completely. They will still remain fairly soft.

One thing I did decide to skimp on was the cookies themselves. I decided to buy ready ones and this proved to be difficult in Sweden, at least in the shops where I looked. I bought what seemed to come nearest, but as it turned out, it didn't work either.

Then the next new thing of the day - buttercream. Again I picked a BBC recipe for this and I made 2 batches, one on 140 g and one on 150 g (the remainder of the butter as it happened).

Buttercream
Ingredients

140 g/150 g unsalted butter at room temperature
280 g/300 g icing sugar
1 tbsp milk (both full and semi-skimmed work)
food colouring of choice

Ingredients

Carefully stir together butter and icing sugar with a fork/spoon/spatula.
Add the milk when almost all of the sugar has been incorporated and add the colouring until the right hue is achieved.
Keep covered if not using straight away and even refrigerate if not using on the same day. It will need to be brought up to room temperature and stirred to soften up again then.

Decorating

To achieve the muppet effect, piping tip #233 is required. Luckily my friend Patsy has recently fallen for the sugarcraft bug and purchased every tool under the sun and she was kind enough to lend it to me. It is normally used to create grass effects and this is what it looks like:



I had trouble finding white chocolate buttons for the eyes in the shops, so I got giant Milkybar buttons, but there are specialist shops that do sell these in Sweden.

For colour, I used 3 tiny tubes of liquid blue colour for egg painting. I think each was about 3 ml or so. I ended up with turquoise, so I also added a pill-sized capsule of powdered egg paint, which did the trick. All these purchased in Bulgaria and were so good, that I'll buy more at the next opportunity. I suspect regular food colour will do just as well. I coloured in the smaller of the two batches of buttercream. The bigger one, I left as was.

For the pupils, I used black icing from a tube left over from the gingersnap decorations a few weeks ago.

Starting with the cooled down muffins,

I first used about a tbsp of the uncoloured buttercream to create a mound on each muffin. Also I noticed that the buttercream wasn't too keen on sticking to the muffin surface, so this will help in getting the blue stuff to stick. Careful, though, it's tasty but very unhealthy, so don't overdo it!

Then, cut a slot for the cookie and stick it into the muffin.

No, no, no. This deformed the muffin. Way too big, way too thick. Anyway, on with the piping. Start at the outer edge and work around in a spiral into the middle, working around the cookie of course. Then, take two white chocolate buttons, squirt out two blobs for the pupils and stick the eyes into the muffin.

Gah, his jaw is about to fall out, no wonder he's cross-eyed!

What to do, what to do? Try using some pink chocolate buttons?

Ha, they look a bit like Grover.

As my Mum was milling around trying to see if she could dig out some long forgotten biscuits of a suitable size and thickness, it struck me - wafers!

Mum quickly got out a small cookie cutter and went to work on the wafers and lo and behold, they were perfect - the diameter was about 3 cm and thickness was 3 mm.

Most of the 13 cupcakes ended up with a nice thin wafer in their mouth.

The buttercream hardened up pretty quickly. I had about 1 dl left over from the blue buttercream and about 0.5 dl of the uncoloured one. Around this point, my Dad asked if it would be possible to make Kermit, Statler & Waldorf, which are his favourites. Probably it is possible, they aren't as fuzzy, so I'd need to use a different technique for them. A project for the future for sure.

The Sunday finished rather late, but was extremely satisfying.

Footie cake for Falbala

It is once again time for Falbala's birthday party and this year she asked for a football themed cake. She does play football among other sports and supports ManU. This also has the added benefit of annoying most of the men in the family as they all like other teams.



For me, it was an opportunity to try out a principle that I'd thought out for the next time I was going to make Princess cake.

There is a hidden away little cookery shop in our village that has a rather good stock of sugarcraft supplies, among others ready to roll fondant icing in various colours, so I bought white, black, red and yellow. I also bought liquid yellow colouring too, without any definitive plan. I also spotted birthday candles in the shape of tiny footballs and bought them as well.

Well home, I made my way to the ManU website to look for a badge and found a decent one. I'd not realised that it is actually quite complicated and still didn't have a clue on how I would make it, but I printed it out to maybe trace it out somehow.

But back to the cake. For the base, I used the recipe from Lou's swimming pool cake. I wasn't entirely sure of how much I would need. I remember Lou's cake ended up massive, and here I would only need a small version of it, but I still ended up making a double batch, just to be on the safe side.

Since I have two springform cake tins, one 20 cm diameter, the other 25, I used both. The large one, I buttered and floured and then poured in a thin layer of cake mixture, as thin as I could make it. The idea was that it would be no more than 2 cm after baking.

The rest went into the small cake tin (also buttered and floured).

Luckily both tins fitted together into the oven, though of course the large thin one had to come out first. I did have some left over cake mixture, so I also made 7 cupcakes, but I over-baked them a bit.

In the mean time, I placed the white icing (500g) between two pieces of clingfilm and rolled it out to about 3 mm thickness and as circular as possible to about 30 cm diameter. No extra icing sugar needed for dusting. Unfortunately the clingfilm did end up with creases here and there, which transferred to the icing, but on the whole, I was pretty pleased.

I then carefully pushed the icing into my semi-spherical bowl (remember my Stoichkov cake?) and when it was in, I removed the top layer of clingfilm.

Next, I fitted in the large thin circle of cake. Unfortunately I should have timed things better so that the cake was still soft and pliable, but I didn't and so it was solid and cracked, so I ended up filling the gaps here and there.



As I was fitting the cake in, I cut off the edges as they were particularly hard. This was a good idea, and I even made sure that the cake ended a couple of cm inside the bowl so that when I'd put in the bottom of the cake, it would fit into the bowl.

Next I spread a thin layer of strawberry jam onto the cake and filled up with whipped cream, which I'd flavoured with a little vanilla and sugar, nothing out of the ordinary at all.

For the bottom of the cake, I cut one 2 cm thick layer from the smaller cake that I made. It fitted rather like a lid. I then wrapped with clingfilm and put in the fridge.

Back to the computer to look for pictures of footballs. Yes, the new ones are made up of various pieces of leather, the older ones were made up of white hexagons and black pentagons. How do you draw a regular pentagon? Google, google, corr, blimey, compass and whatnot. No, no, no. But the internal angle of a regular pentagon is 108 degrees, and luckily I managed to find a protractor and made myself a regular pentagon from a piece of paper, much easier. OK, maths lesson over.

The next day, on the actual birthday, I put the cake together. This means turning it over and out of the bowl, a very careful activity, but with a little patience the cake came out quite nicely.

There were some creases on it from the clingfilm, I tried to smooth them a bit with a dough scraper, but it didn't really work. I'll need to look into this further.

Again, using to pieces of clingfilm, I rolled out some of the black fondant icing and using my paper regular pentagon, I cut out 6 and pressed them carefully against the white icing on the cake, one on top and 5 around the side.



At this point I had come to realise that I would not be able to create a ManU badge in sugar, so cut out the one I had printed out and placed on the top of the cake as well. Very lame, I know, but I'd just run out of ideas.

But it turned out rather nice on the whole. And proved that my idea of constructing a cake upside-down in a mould works. I also ended up with two more layers from the smaller cake I baked. They are now in the freezer for emergency situations. A thing to keep in mind - coloured icing bleeds through paper and towards the end of the birthday party, the ManU badge was barely visible. Must remember to put greaseproof paper inbetween.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY FALBALA!