The Melancholy Aubergine
Exams have sent me mad. Send help.
Yeah, I know. Not regular apple crumble; not apple crumble made with love and care by my own dear mother and lavished upon me in the finest china while I recline on my velvet chaise longe, watching Doctor Who repeats in a careless manner (although this does happen all the time). Just regular, mass-produced, margarine-not-butter apple crumble, flung together by underpaid dinner ladies every second Thursday.
But god, that stuff is good.
'It's not that good,' my best friend tends to say when I lapse into incoherent lusty noises over lunch. 'It's only apple crumble.'
HA! Shows what she knows.
I know, I know. You're peering at these photos now, aren't you? Muttering to bewildered family members, 'apple crumble? That doesn't look like apple crumble' and possibly, 'is that not a plate?'. Some of you may even be poking your monitors mutinously; possibly the words, 'bar cookie' have passed your lips while you try to comprehend where I'm going with this ode to school apple crumble.
The thing is... I'm not here to give you the recipe for that apple crumble. I know. I'm sorry. I thought about it, and then I thought, 'but - how will food bloggers the world over POSSIBLY APPRECIATE the sheer genius of this pudding without a big enough build up?'. For all I know, you could go the same way as my treacherous best friend ('only apple crumble'? ONLY APPLE CRUMBLE; I ASK YOU).
No, the only solution was to raise the tension a bit. An advertising campaign, if you will. After a few weeks of me subliminally dropping apple crumble references into every post, you will be desperate to own this recipe for yourselves.
Alternatively, you will have stopped reading my blog. One of the two.
Which brings me to the recipe at hand. Now, this may be a build-up recipe, but don't go thinking that it's only a build-up recipe. This has its own kind of genius, namely: it is apple crumble THAT YOU CAN CARRY AROUND WITH YOU. Should you be strolling the streets one summer evening, and the urge for apple crumble seizes you, there is no longer any need to vault a nearby wall and break into the school kitchens! You can carry apple crumble IN YOUR POCKET.
The sheer genius of this idea makes me slightly weak at the knees.
Apple crumble bars
Original recipe (and American measurements) here
560g flour
1/2 tsp salt
270g sugar
60g brown sugar
330g butter, softened
About 5 granny smith apples, skinned and diced (I halved this and used 2, cause we only had 2, but use 3 if you halve the recipe)
1 tsp cinnamon
1. Take the butter out of the fridge to soften (do not melt) on the counter as you peel and dice up the apples into small cubes. Squirt with some lemon juice and set aside.
2. Combine the flour, salt, white sugar and brown sugar in a bowl.
3. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients. The butter should not be melted; what we’re going for here are crumbs. You can either do this with a wooden spoon, or you can use your hands to crush it all together.
4. Take 1 cup of the crumb mixture and mix it with the apples. Add the cinnamon as well and set aside.
5. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and flour a 9×13 baking pan. Take 1/2 of your remaining crumb mixture and press it into the bottom of the pan. Bake for 10 minutes.
6. Remove the crust from the oven, pour in the apple mixture and top with last of the crumbs. Put it back in the oven for another 45 minutes. When it’s done, the top should be a beautiful golden brown. Cool by putting the pan on a wire rack so air can circulate around it. Cut into bars after they’ve completely cooled, if you can resist it. It’s a great idea to refrigerate the bars so they set a bit more.
Well I asked at the end of my last post if anyone had any suggestions for what rosewater was good for, and you - you lovely bunch - were full of ideas and flavour pairings, so if roses symbolise love, consider this post a bit of a romance novel for you all.
This dessert may be of uncertain genre, but one thing I'm sure of is that the flavours taste great together (thanks everyone who suggested rose/lemon, rose/raspberry, rose/rice pudding, &c. &c.). I wanted to finish this with a sprinkle of pistachio nuts, but we had none; hence the raspberry massacre you see before your eyes. (I can't get over this. They're not even heart shaped or anything. They're bloodstain shaped. Sigh.)
This was a rice pudding recipe I found here, which intrigued me due to the lack of pudding rice in it ('BUT WHERE IS THE RICE? THIS IS MADNESS.'); apparently I find it hard to get my head around minor changes in food habit. I believe I had a similar reaction when it came to a Japanese-style cheesecake with no crust. This uses ground rice instead, which seemed pretty radical to me.
'Aha!' I cried, feeling triumphant, 'yet another culinary first! A break-through! A twist, on a time-honoured theme!'
At this point, my mother came into the kitchen and peered over my shoulder at the puddings. 'Aww,' she said. 'I used to feed you this sort of thing when you were about six months old. You've regressed!'
Once again; thank you, mother.
This is a more grown-up version of what I used to eat when I was six months old. If that appeals to you (and it should, because this is good, okay? Ignore my mum. It bears no resemblance to baby food, and has, you know, bloodstains and everything. It's at least a PG or 12A in the pudding department) give it a try.
Raspberry & Rose Rice Pudding
Adapted from here.
Makes two generous portions
55g (2oz) ground rice
15g (1/2 oz) ground almonds
80g (3 oz) caster sugar
200ml coconut milk (you could use all coconut milk; it's just that we had half a can in the fridge that needed eating)
150ml ordinary milk
50ml evaporated milk (again, we just had some in the fridge; you could use about 3 tbsp of double cream as in the original recipe. But we had none of that, and it didn't make any difference to me)
60 ml (4 tbsp) rosewater
juice of half a lemon
To garnish: Raspberries (I used frozen ones that I'd zapped in the microwave, hence the bloodstains. But meant a nice juice)/pistachio nuts/whatever.
1. In a large saucepan, combine rice flour, ground almonds, coconut milk, milk and sugar, cooking over very low heat until thickened and gently bubbly, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or whisk. If mixture becomes too thick, add incremental amounts of additional milk. Cook for another five minutes.
2. Remove from heat then stir in evaporated milk/cream, rosewater and lemon juice. Adjust sugar to taste. Pour into individual bowls or glasses. Decorate with optional garnishes. Refrigerate until cool and firm.
It's Daring Baker time!! And after this month's challenge, I've come to the conclusion that the DBers are not the ninja pirates I suspected they were.
To explain: I messed this up in more or less every possible way. The thing was, I'd decided to halve it, cause the original recipe made such an epic sized cake. So as I went along, I used half quantities of sugar, flour, butter... and then my brain malfuctioned (#1) and in went ALL the almonds (I seem to have an unconscious desire to waste ground almonds), all of whatever else, full quantities of buttercream for a half sized cake... you name it, I messed up the amounts of it.
Brain malfunction #2: Deciding it would be a good idea to colour the syrup (oh yeah; full quantities of that) pink rather than the actual cake. Meant my cake was kind of marbled in places where the syrup had been poured over the sponge. Does that sound pretty? It was actually kind of crap.
I just like to shatter your illusions there. Sorry.
Then there was #3: Mixing the buttercream, putting it in a tub to be assembled the next day, and then remembering I'd wanted that to be pink as well, scraping it out, colouring it, and piling it all back in again.
#4: Deciding reading the recipe was once again not for me when it came to the mousse, and instead of melting the white chocolate with a couple of tbsp of the cream, chucking it all in. My mousse was not so much mousse as sauce. It tasted fantastic. But it was sauce. I left it in the freezer, hoping it would solidify a bit (I'm an optimist) but let me just say that recipes? Are written down for a reason. Oh Daring Bakers, you teach me so much.
#5: Actually I don't know if this was the fault of my brain or of my culinary skillz (which is worse?) but I had serious issues with the white chocolate glaze; everything started melting and dying and seizing up left right and centre. I made full quantities of that (on purpose this time!) and had to glaze the entire cake rather than just the top to try and hide the sorry state of affairs.
And this is where the Daring Bakers show their true colours as practioners of the magical arts: this cake was gorgeous. Despite the mad quantities, and the failure of my mousse, and my lack of recipe-reading, and the travesty I made of the glaze, this really was delicious, and a massive hit with my mum especially, who requested it as her birthday cake (me: 'O NOEZ!! NOT AGAIN!! DDD='). Looks like the Daring Bakers were watching over me XD.
I might go and sacrifice a lamb or something to them now. Or at least a batch of cookies.
Daring Bakers' Opéra Cake
(white chocolate & rosewater)
Recipe is here. I used half quantities. Mostly.
Anyone got any ideas what else I can make with rosewater essence? I loved it in this, and am dying to use it in other things. Expect rose flavoured everything for a few weeks, until the novelty wears off XD.
I have a lot of excuses to make, and most of them are along the lines of 'procrastination' and 'revision' and 'new job', so rather than dwell on the reasons I've pretty much failed as a food blogger recently, I'm going to ply you all with cookies to make you love me again. You do love me, right? 
You know what else I YAY LOVE YUM YUM HEEEE? These cookies. You may have seen them before; they're the salted white chocolate oatmeal cookies from Smitten Kitchen. I imagine Smitten Kitchen as an actual big farmhouse kitchen with sheepdogs and a range and lots of these cookies; also, I want to live there. As a permanent resident. I ate one of these cookies fresh from the oven, and they were just the right mix of salty-sweetness and crispy-softness and other such culinary contradictions. 
Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies
PS: And in case you were thinking I couldn't fail any more... huge thank you to Diva at The Sugar Bar for the 'You Make My Day' award, which I completely forgot to mention and now feel like a fool about. It made me smile so much! Rather than pass this one on, since I'm in a hurry and trying not to draw attention to how I forgot to tag others earlier, I'd like to ask everyone to take a look at some of the blogs on my -newly updated- blogroll (right); all of them are fantastic, and I visit them so often. They all really deserve this, because reading everyone's blogs cheers me right up XD.
As do cookies, but in a different way.
Yep. It's one of my infamous health foods again.
So, the original recipe looked more like this. Yes, these were originally Rocky Road Bars - I'm not exactly sure what they are now. A road somewhere else, presumeably. I cut out the cocoa powder (upping the flour to make up), added white chocolate instead coughcough, changed and reduced the sugar, added dessicated coconut (which I'm certain is healthy, but can't back up with any factual knowledge or anything. Now I've left school, everyone knows I don't have knowledge anymore), and swapped all the sugar-high toppings for... sugar-high fruit toppings.
...I don't actually have any. Yeah, it's true; I've run out of excuses to bake. My friends are all busy revising and working and so on, and I mostly sit at home procrastinating, singing the soundtrack to Wicked: The Musical and occasionally recreating a Native American sun dance (something I came across in my US History notes. Wait til I get to Russian History; who knows what that has in store?). When your days are filled with this sort of thing, it's hard to find someone who wants to hang out with you. Can I get an 'aww'?
Anyone? Fine then.
I've been reduced to actually baking for my family, who (sorry) usually don't deserve it. Firstly there was the Daring Baker challe-- only kidding, DBers! Put your hitmen back in their drawer! I'm not going to give that away yet. But needless to say my family are pretty shocked. It's maybe because of this that these bars have been such a hit - they keep eating more to check they're really there.
Me? Er, same.
Tropical Road Bars
Makes 16
115g butter
100g caster sugar
1 large egg
70g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
120ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp dessicated coconut
100g white chocolate, melted
For topping:
40g dessicated coconut
80g milk chocolate chips (Okay, I didn't have a full bag for some reason)
200g dried apricots
100g dried sweetened pineapple
Preheat oven to 180C. Line an 8-inch square pan.
1. In a medium saucepan, melt butter and white chocolate, then remove from heat and stir in sugar, egg, flour, salt, milk, coconut and vanilla extract until well-blended.Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes.
2. Remove pan from oven and top with coconut, chocolate chips, apricots and pineapple, pressing them down with a spatula. Return to oven and bake for 5-7 additional minutes (I upped the temperature a bit, to toast the coconut on the top). Cool on a wire rack before slicing with a damp or lightly greased knife into 16 bars. Bars can be stored at room temperature or in the fridge.
3. My toppings kept falling everywhere as I hadn't pressed them down hard enough, so just in case I hadn't hit my sugar quota for the day I made a thin caramel syrup (10g butter, 4 tbsp sugar, a slosh of milk) to pour over the top of the bars while they were still in the pan, to hopefully glue the toppings on. This probably isn't necessary, but I just really like sugar.
Ah, sugar. My true friend. You would never forsake me for Classics revision.
Oh hey, I actually have a slab of bright red roasted meat to hand. Someone pass me a carving knife, and he can have my right arm.
140g bulghur wheat
2 garlic cloves, crushed (has anyone ever actually succeeded at crushing garlic? I chop mine up. Share your secrets.)
4 tbsp olive oil
2 aubergines, thinly sliced lengthways
400g can chickpeas, drained
140g pack cherry tomatoes, halved
1 red onion
100g feta cheese
1 large bunch mint, leaves chopped
juice 1 1/2 lemons (I just used one juicy one)
1. Cook the bulghur wheat according to pack instructions (either in a pan with however-much water, or in a bowl covered with however-much water), then drain well. In a small bowl, mix together the garlic and olive oil, then use half to brush over both sides of the aubergine strips with some seasoning. Sear the strips on a hot griddle or in a frying pan for a few minutes (aubergine ALWAYS takes me longer than it says) each side until charred and softened.
2. Tip the wheat into a large bowl with the chickpeas, tomatoes, onion, feta and mint, then pour over the remaining garlicky oil and the lemon juice. Mix and season well, then pile onto plates with the charred aubergine.
