My first cake

I feel like there should be a picture of a Fisher Price toy under here, but no - it's just my favourite fruit cake that I was baking at 7am this morning. Damn you, insomnia.

Based on Nigella's Marzipan fruit cake (Domestic Goddess, page 34) but with extra marzipan and cherries, and using figs instead of pears. Because, you know, I'm incapable of sticking to an actual recipe more than once.

All hail the new pantry and yhe migraine inducing 'vintage' kitchen. And cake, obviously.

Banana Shpeel

Sorry, it's a completely off-centre reference to a Cirque du Soleil show, but I wanted to maintain my good track record of musical references in post titles *is a girly swot*

I was searching through my previous posts and was astounded to find a lack of reference to Nigella's banana bread from Domestic Goddess. In my copy of DG this is one of those pages that's covered in sticky fingerprints, flour and quite possibly bits of banana. In my defence I never claimed to be the cleanest cook.

Last time I made this, I tried the variation and made a chocolate banana bread. I have a confession to make: I didn't like it anywhere near as much as the regular one. So this week I went back to my reliable tried and tested recipe.

INGREDIENTS

100g sultanas
75ml bourbon or dark rum
175g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
125g unsalted butter, melted
150g sugar
2 large eggs
4 small, very ripe bananas (about 300g weighed without skin), mashed
60g chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
23 x 13 x 7cm loaf tin, buttered and floured or with a paper insert

METHOD


1. Put the sultanas and rum or bourbon in a smallish saucepan and bring to the boil.
2. Remove from the heat, cover and leave for an hour if you can, or until the sultanas have absorbed most of the liquid, then drain.
3. Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas mark 3 and get started on the rest. Put the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a medium-sized bowl and, using your hands or
4. a wooden spoon, combine well. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas. Then, with your wooden spoon, stir in the walnuts, drained sultanas and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each bit. Scrape into the loaf tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1–11/4 hours. When it’s ready, an inserted toothpick or fine skewer should come out cleanish. Leave in the tin on a rack to cool, and eat thickly or thinly sliced, as you prefer.

Variation

Replace 25g of the flour with good cocoa powder and add 100g of dark chocolate, cut up into smallish chunks.

This is such an easy cake to make, and it goes down a treat with everyone I've ever offered it to. Honestly, I can now make it in about 20 minutes and then once it's in the oven you can do what you like. It always bakes with quite a dark top, but it's just the colour it goes. Great for elevenses with a cup of tea.

It's going to be a Happy New Year

As always for me, New Year was a quiet affair, it's a celebration that I don't really have much time for; parties make it feel anticlimactic, I can't bear the prospect of paying to get into pubs and then paying more for drinks and London itself is just bananas, and not having been part of a couple of late I am excluded from the nights in a lot of my peers indulge in. Anyway this year I decided to spend it with someone and just have a night in. I made us comfort food - cottage pie with lots of green vegetables, and bought some cava for midnight. It felt exactly right, relaxed, cosy and intimate.

I used the cottage/ shepherd's pie recipe I always revert to, which came from one of my Mum's Good Housekeeping recipe books from the 1970's. It was one of those books that was designed to help you use up your leftovers, and told you what you could freeze, and what could be made in a slow cooker and things. I have no clue where it is now, which is a shame as it would be really useful. Apart from the section on cooking things in aspic, I don't think anyone will ever want to revive that trend *shudders*

Anyway, so that was my new year, cottage pie, some winter Pimms (which I deserve commision on because I am encouraging so many people to try it!) and the heating on.

So, with a post title that finally bears some resemblance to lyrics from a musical (I'm hoping the launch of Glee will provide me with some new inspiration as of late I've been reduced to titles that actually resemble my recipe and not some vague allusion!)

Not making the Nigella cornbread stuffing had left me with a single orange and a pack of fresh cranberries. A morning spent googling for muffin recipes hadn't come up with anything much, and I wasn't sure where to go until a friend pointed me back to Nigella, and Domestic Goddess this time (I know I've been all about Feast of late). The Christmas Morning muffins were just what I had in mind, and took about 20 minutes to knock up.

Christmas Morning Muffins

200g plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
75g demerara sugar
good grating fresh nutmeg
1 clementine or small orange - I would grate and add the zest aswell if making again
approximately 50ml milk
60g unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg
150g dried cranberries
12-bun muffin tin with papers

for the topping:
2 teaspoons demerara sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon


Preheat the oven to 200ºC/gas mark 6.

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, bicarb and sugar, and grate over a generous amount of fresh nutmeg.
2. Squeeze the orange or clementine juice into a measuring jug, then pour in milk on top till it comes up to the 150ml mark. Add the melted butter and the egg, and beat to combine.
3. Pour the jug of liquid ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir till the ingredients are more or less combined, remembering that a lumpy batter makes light muffins.
4. Last of all, lightly fold in the cranberries and fill the muffin cases or cups. The amount of cranberries specified here makes for heavily fruited muffins; if you want them sparser, use half the amount.
5. Mix together the demerara sugar and ground cinnamon and sprinkle over the tops of the muffins.
6. Stick them in the oven and bake for 20 minutes

Nigella says to split them open and spread them with butter and marmalade, but we just ate them as they were. The cranberries make for fantastic pockets of tartness in what would otherwise be a quite sweet, but very light muffin, which is quite nice with a coffee for a late breakfast.

Next time, I need to find a way to use up the huge bag of oatmeal I bought to make facepacks with the Guides, and also more exploits in bread with Mabel the leaven.

Paciencia y Fe

More of a theme than a title, Patience and Faith, from In the Heights, another of my favourite Broadway musicals. Perhaps I should just move there since there's barely anything on in the West End that takes my fancy anylonger. Although, that said the upcoming adaptation of Terry Pratchett's novel Nation by The National Theatre is making me squeeishly excited despite not being a musical (unless one were to include the beer song? Does one song about beer a musical make? Hmm, I'm sure that's a debate for another post)

Anyway, Paciencia y Fe were much needed in the vicinity of the Pantry on Saturday as I attempted to make lime curd. I should explain, I have attempted to make custard from scratch once before, and we suspect I poisoned my little sister with it. I was doing it by hand and had been whisking for EVER before giving up and putting the not custard in ramekins and baking them in an attempt to make creme brulees. They weren't successful, Mandy was very sick. However, this was a long time ago, and before making my notes for this post (because I do make notes y'know, it's not entirely a stream of consciousness) I had forgotten all about it. I must have been scarred though as, until Saturday I had never attempted anything custardy from scratch again. Ambrosia or Sainsos TTD were as custardy as I got. The shame. But on Saturday, when challenged to do something new with courgettes, and having decided upon Flora's famous Courgette layer cake from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess, lime curd was required. As an aside, don't you just hate that, when you look over a recipe and think. That's it. That's the one I'll try, only for the last line to be, "and fill with the lime curd from page 344" Outrage. However, I was organised, and eggs were purchased.

Lime Curd (pg 344 Domestic Goddess)

75g unsalted butter

3 large eggs

75g caster sugar

Juice of 4 limes

zest of 1 lime

So, having grated and zested my limes, and weighed out my ingredients, I melted the butter in a big pan over a low heat. When melted I added the sugar, eggs, lime juice and zest and whisked. Now, I have a lovely little handheld electric whisk that does everything I need it to, and it still took 5 tracks of Daniel Boys album So Close, which is approximately 20 minutes of whisking time. With electricity - hence the need for paciencia y fe. I rolled my eyes, made exasperated noises and even sang at it, but clearly it was time for me to learn a lesson and it didn't cook any faster for all my efforts. However, eventually it came together, and all my worry that I wouldn't know when that was and would end up poisoning people again went out the window as I could clearly tell it was ready.

Compared to that the courgette cake was a doddle. Basically 2 sponge cakes with courgette added, however, Nigella tells you to drain the courgettes, which I did in the same way as always by wrapping them in a teatowl and wringing it out. Fortunately I did this into a bowl as I found Nigella's batter as per her recipe far too dry. I added about 3 tablespoons of the courgette water until the batter worked it's way to a dropping consistency.

250g courgettes (weighed before grating)

2 large eggs

125ml vegetable oil

150g caster sugar

225g self raising flour

1/2 tsp bicarb

1/2 tsp baking powder

Once again Paciencia y Fe were the keywords as for some strange reason I only have one sandwich pan, so had to bake each layer separately, leave them to cool in the tin and then re-butter and line and cook the next one. When everything was finally baked and cooled, and I must say that they came out of the oven the prettiest golden brown (which was a result having made banana bread last week that entirely caught on top) although not particularly risen, but very light nonetheless. So, yes, baked and cooled, I sandwiched together with the lime curd (the remains of which are now in a kilner jar in my fridge waiting for an opportune moment.)

Now finally I have a bone to pick with Nigella middlename Lawson. Your cream cheese icing recipe is pants. I used exactly the quantities in the recipe and even 24 hours later it resembles nothing like the one I use on top of the chocolate Guinness cake. I was very disappointed, and stomped around (yes, so much for Paciencia y Fe, Olga Merediz can just bugger off and I'll skip straight onto 96,000 thankyouverymuch). However, it does taste fab, the lime juice cutting through the richness of the cream cheese and icing sugar wonderfully.

So here we have the assembled cake. Courgette Layer cake, with lime curd, and a large dose of Paciencia y Fe.