Keeping Tea Cosy For Breast Cancer

No you are not seeing things. These wonderful ladies from New South Wales ARE wearing tea cosies on their heads. It's all part of a drive to raise lots and lots of money for breast cancer. The idea is to knit make or create wild tea cosies which will be sold in aid of this very worthy charity.
They are members of the Country Women's Association and there are only twenty two of them so this is a huge project for them. If you would like to join in from anywhere in the world you will find the details here. Pictures of your tea cosy will be published and there is a prize too.

Come on you cooking ladies. I know you can create lots of stuff outside the kitchen too and it looks so much fun.

Chocolate Amaretti Cake

I have a love of all things Italian. From the food to the language to the opera and of course to the gorgeous shoes and bags that come from there. I don't know why this should be. I have no Italian blood in my family and have only been there once. I took my mother to Rome years ago. I have always meant to go back but as yet have not made it. My father was stationed in Rome during the second world war. I don't know if looking at his photos as a young child triggered off this love affair with Italy but it is there for whatever reason. I found the recipe for this wonderful cake in Rachel Allen's 'Food For Living'. She says she was served a slice of this with a glass of Amaretti while in Italy. Gorgeous almond flavours mixed with orange and chocolate. Absolute heaven. During Roman times, almonds were considered a fertility charm, and newly-weds would be showered with almonds during weddings. There have been documented findings that nutmeats and dried fruits were treated as delicacies of this time, because the cultivation of these foods was not as prevalent as today. Imagine the value of something as small as a nut being a cherished gift for so many centuries! Back to the cake. It is dense and moist with a crunchy top and keeps extremely well. This makes it a great dessert for a dinner party as it can be made in advance. I imagine it would also be lovely served with some berries and /or cream on the side. Perfect. The plate it is served on came from Italy as a gift from a dear forum friend, Carlotta. It seemed appropriate to serve this gorgeous cake on such a lovely platter.

Serves 8-12

150g good dark chocolate (at least 55% cocoa solids, preferably 70%)
50g amaretti biscuits
100g flaked almonds, chopped
175g caster sugar
Zest of 1 orange, finely grated
100g butter, cubed
4 eggs, beaten
Cocoa powder or icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4.

Line the base of a 20cm-diameter springform tin with greaseproof paper and butter the sides.

Melt the chocolate in a bowl sitting over a saucepan of simmering water.

Place the amaretti biscuits, almonds, sugar and orange zest in a food processor, then whizz until the biscuits and almonds are almost finely ground – I like to leave them a bit gritty. Add the butter and eggs, whizz until blended, then add the melted chocolate and briefly whizz again until well combined.

Pour into the prepared tin and pop straight in the oven. Cook for 35 minutes until the cake is puffed and slightly cracked around the edges. Remove and leave to sit for 15 minutes before carefully transferring to a plate. The top is quite crisp, and cracks easily, so I dust it with lots of icing sugar or cocoa powder before serving, to hide any imperfections.

Notes: I did find this cake to a little longer to bake than the specified time. I suggest the use of a skewer. It is sticky in the middle so don't over cook.

I used ground almonds as that is what I had.

Garlic Soda Bread

The other night I decided to make a pasta dish for dinner. It was quick and simple. My only problem was I needed bread. To sit down to pasta or rice for dinner without bread to me would be unthinkable. I don't know why it should be so but it is. I usually make my own version of Nigella Lawson's Garlic and Parsley Hearth Breads. but it was late and I really couldn't be bothered faffing around waiting for yeast to rise. I then wondered if I could make a sort of flat bread using my soda bread recipe. For those of you who are not familiar, soda bread is common in Ireland and is so called because the levening agent is Bicarbonate of Soda or Baking Soda. It's a mix, stir and pop in the oven bread. No rising time. It is really a scone mixture. The reason this bread is part of the Irish culinary heritage is simple enough. In this land where the influence of the Gulf Stream prevents either great extremes of heat in the summer or cold in the winter, the hard wheats, which need such extremes to grow, don't prosper .It's such wheats that make flour with a high gluten content, producing bread which rises high and responds well to being leavened with yeast. Soft wheats, though, have always grown well enough here. In Ireland, "plain" soda bread is as likely to be eaten as an accompaniment to a main meal (to soak up the gravy) as it's likely to appear at breakfast. It comes in two main colours, brown (also called wheaten bread) and white. I digress. I was not sure if this idea would work or not but I glanced through Rachel Allen's 'Bake' I saw she had done something similar and it looked good. I just sort of combined Nigella's Hearth Bread Recipe with the Soda Bread. I have to report it was a runaway success. I will definitely make it again. Do you know it was still nice the next day split and popped in the toaster.

Ingredients.

3-4 tablespoons Olive Oil
250gms /9oz plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon Salt
125-200ml /6-7 fl ozbuttermilk

Topping

Crushed squished or jarred garlic
Chopped parsley
Olive oil to mix
Maldon salt to sprinkle

Method


Finely chop a little parsley and mix with some of the oil oil and garlic. Use enough that will spread generously across the top of the dough.

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 8.

Brush an 20cmx20cm/8"x8" square sandwich tin generously with olive oil.

Sieve the plain flour,baking soda and salt into a large bowl

Make a well in the centre, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and pour in most of the buttermilk.

Mix until it comes together to form a soft but not sticky dough.

Tip onto a floured surface and roll out to fit the tin

Set the dough in the oiled tin and dimple it all over with your fingers

Brush the top with the prepared garlic and parsley topping and sprinkle with a little maldon salt if desired

Bake for 20-25 minutes Just keep checking as all ovens are different.

When ready it will be golden brown, should feel firm in the centre and a skewer will come out clean.

Transfer it to a wire rack and cool for a couple of minutes.

Cut into squares and serve.

Notes
This gave me about nine squares of bread which was more than enough for two. If you want more you could double it up and use a bigger tin such as a swiss roll tin.

Christmas Pudding Bread

Christmas has gone again for another year. Our fridges are returning slowly to normal. Did we really need quite such a variety of cheeses? What is that bit of goo in a bowl wrapped in cling film? Are those extra brussell sprouts never going to rot? I suspect there are still a few bits of Christmas pudding lying around too, waiting to be dispatched to the bird table or worse the bin. I hate waste so I thought this was a novel way of using it up. My Christmas pudding was very dark and sticky so it produced a very moist rich bread. Nice toasted and smells wonderful. I think you could also use Christmas cake in this recipe. Why not if it's lying around and you can't face any more.

Ingredients


Christmas pudding (Whatever you have but don't use more than 250 grms/9oz)
250 gms/9oz plain flour
250gms /9oz white bread flour
2 eggs
200 mls/7 fluid oz milk
1 tablespoon runny honey
1 tablespoon dried active yeast.
pinch of salt


Glaze

12.5gms/1/2 oz butter softened
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice.

Method


Mix the flours and salt in a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer if you have a dough hook.
Crumble in the Christmas pudding and mix through

Warm the milk and add the honey.
Sprinkle in the yeast and stir.
Leave for five or ten minutes until the yeast is quite frothy.

Beat the eggs.
Make a well in the flour and pour the yeast mixture and the eggs in.
Mix until you have a nice soft dough (not sticky though).
If you feel your dough is too dry add a little water a teaspoon at a time but go carefully. You want to be able to handle the dough easily not have a sticky pile in the bowl.

Knead with a dough hook for about five minutes or by hand for 10 minutes.

Form the dough into a ball.
Turn this in an oiled bowl so that the dough has a light film of oil.
Cover with a tea towel or cling film and leave in a warm place until it has doubled in volume (about an hour).

When the dough has risen, pull it out of the bowl onto a lightly oiled work top with lightly oiled hands. This stops the dough sticking to you and everything else.
Form it into an oblong and divide into two equal pieces.
Form these into two balls and place on a greased and floured baking sheet.
Flatten the balls slightly.

Cover with lightly oiled cling fim and leave to rise again for about half an hour.

Pre-Heat your oven to 200.C/180.C Fan/400.F/Gas 6
When the loaves have risen snip the tops with scissors or slash with a sharp knife a couple of times then place them in the oven and bake for about thirty minutes until golden brown and the bottoms tap hollow.

While they are baking, mix the spice with the softened butter,
As soon as you remove the loaves from the oven smother them with this spicy butter. (I find those silicone pastry brushes great for this job)
Leave on a cooling rack.

How Not To Brine A Turkey

I brined my turkey last Christmas for the first time. I will always brine my turkey. I have never tasted such a moist Christmas Day dinner in my life. There is no great mystery. It is the soaking of meat in a solution of water and salt. Additional flavourings like sugar and spices can also be added, but salt is what makes a brine a brine . This soaking causes the meat to gain some saltiness and flavouring while plumping it up with water so that after cooking it still contains a lot of juices. Anyhow today I lugged my 17 pound turkey home and with some pleasure got it's bath ready with the necessary salt, spices and other additions for flavour. So far so good. I had my grandchildren to stay tonight and as is the nature of young children they are interested in everything. I told my two year old Grandson about the turkey in the bath. He peered at it for quite some time and repeated 'Turkey...bath' a number of times. He toddled back into the kitchen and I was distracted at the cooker. I heard a resounding splash from the utility room followed by the words 'Turkey..........bath' I looked in to find my lovely brining turkey with the rather undesirable addition of a bar of pink soap! I don't think We'll be singing Silent Night on Thursday, more like 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles'.

Happy Christmas

My Hundreth Post

I have only just realised that this is somewhat of an event. My poor blog has been sadly neglected this month of December. This is not because I haven't been cooking, quite the reverse. My kitchen is so cluttered with bits of this and that waiting to be made into things I don't have room to take the obligatory pictures. Perhaps next week when everything is finally put together.

I cannot think of a better way to celebrate my hundredth post than to wish all my wonderful Blogging friends and those on the Pantry the most wonderful of Christmases and sweet peace in the coming year. It has been something of a revelation to me to chat to so many of you wonderful people out there. Thank you for the joy and pleasure you have all brought me.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

We are having a challenge on Vi's Pantry at the moment taking recipes from Nigella Express. This cake was one of the challenges set. This cake /dessert is a real retro dish. So easy to make. Tastes and looks wonderful and, if there is any left, keeps well in the fridge I will definitely be making this again and again. so quick to put together and so pretty on the table. I expect you can make this with fresh pineapple but the canned variety of pineapple rings are so even and soft and easy to mould into the tin.. The fresh may be better for you but I think Ill stick with the canned variety.


2 x 15ml tbsp sugar
6 slices pineapple from a 425g can, plus 3 x 15ml tbsp of the juice
11 glacé cherries, approx 75g total weight
100g flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g soft butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs

Method
1 Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6.
Butter a Tarte Tatin tin (24cm wide at the top and 20cm diameter at the bottom) or use a 23cm cake tin (neither loose bottomed nor spring form).
2 Sprinkle 2 tbsp sugar onto the buttered base, and then arrange the pineapple slices to make a circular pattern as in the picture.
3 Fill each pineapple ring with a glacé cherry, and then dot one in each of the spaces in between.
4 Put the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, butter, caster sugar and eggs into a food processor and run the motor until the batter is smooth. Then pour in the 3 tbsp pineapple juice to thin it a little.
5 Pour this mixture carefully over the pineapple rings; it will only just cover it, so spread it out gently.
6 Bake for 30 minutes, then ease a spatula around the edge of the tin, place a plate on top and, with one deft move, turn it upside-down.

Note
I used a 20cm sandwich tin as it is what I had
I used self raising flour and soft marg.