Upside Down & Back To Front

There is one important thing I have to tell you, regarding this cake.

Don't be like me.

To my knowledge, no one is actually aspiring to be like me (to justify why, refer to the episode of the Melancholy Aubergine, which I like to consider a lowpoint in my mental health record) so this shouldn't be too difficult for most of you.

Let me specify. Don't make a ten inch cake in an seven inch cake pan. Don't eat all your leftover pineapple (yum, pineapple) before catching on to this fact. And DON'T, whatever you do, use a loosebottomed cake pan rather than a solid dish for a cake with a layer of caramel at the bottom.

'Ohh,' you say. '...But I quite like the look of all that melted, oozy caramel on that baking tray up there...'

Yeah? Well, I only caught on to put the baking tray beneath my cake tin half an hour into the baking time. Ever wondered what all that melted, oozy caramel would look like burnt black onto the bottom of an Aga oven?

Well, I'd show you , but I was too busy shutting my head into said oven and weeping at that point to photo it.

Then there was the point where I was forced to eat the rest of the dripping caramel off the baking tray - a sacrifice I am willing to make - and immediately burnt my tongue on it (karma?) and had to stick effectively my entire head under the cold tap. (At this point I took a break for a pint glass of orange squash, while wishing fervently -albeit somewhat redundantly- that it was vodka). And the point where I had to desperately hunt out some overripe peaches for a second cake, since I'd misread the tin size and had half my mixture left over, to find that my little sister had had a joyful, eureka, 'I like a type of fruit!' moment the previous day and eaten half the punnet in one fell swoop.

And the point where I brandished my spatula furiously at the sky, shouting to the Kitchen Gods, 'NOTHING ON EARTH COULD PERSUADE ME TO MAKE THIS CAKE AGAI---'

--Oh.

Well, that's certainly very convincing.

Do continue.

Yes, I see your point.

Well, if you insist. The difficulties were all my own fault, obviously. I suppose one could say I've learnt from experience now. There really seems no point to hold it against the recipe, after all, and... and... nomnomnom ♥.

Pineapple/Peach Upside Down Cake
Adapted from Gourmet, Feb 2000. Via Smitten Kitchen
(Adapted to metric by yours truly, as usual)
Makes one 10" cake or two 7" cakes (yeah, I don't really get the maths there) if you want to do one of each. Which obviously, I fully intended.

For topping:
1/2 medium pineapple, peeled, quartered lengthways, and cored (or a punnet of peaches)
85g unsalted butter
90g light brown sugar

For batter:
210g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
85g unsalted butter, softened
180g caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp dark rum
120ml unsweetened pineapple juice (I used orange as it was all I had)
2 tbsp dark rum for sprinkling over cake, which I forgot.

Special equipment: 10-inch cast-iron skillet. If you lack a cast-iron skillet of this size, make the caramel in a small pot and scrape it into the bottom of a similarly-sized cake pan. But not with a loose bottom that will leak out everywhere. Learn from my ineptitude. Something I'm not confident is a word.

Preheat oven to 180°C.

1. Make topping: Cut pineapple crosswise into 3/8-inch-thick pieces. Melt butter in skillet . Add brown sugar and simmer over moderate heat, stirring, 4 minutes. Remove from heat. Arrange pineapple on top of sugar mixture in concentric circles, overlapping pieces slightly.

2. Make batter: Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, then gradually beat in granulated sugar. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla and rum. Add half of flour mixture and beat on low speed just until blended. Beat in pineapple juice, then add remaining flour mixture, beating just until blended. (Batter may appear slightly curdled.)

3. Spoon batter over pineapple topping and spread evenly. Bake cake in middle of oven until golden and a tester comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Let cake stand in skillet 5 minutes. Invert a plate over skillet and invert cake onto plate (keeping plate and skillet firmly pressed together). Replace any pineapple stuck to bottom of skillet. Sprinkle rum over cake and cool on plate on a rack. Serve cake just warm or at room temperature; I have to say though that personally I loved it best straight out the fridge in big hefty wedges.

I made these -two- cakes at around midday, and when I came back from work later that night and opened the fridge I found ONE piece of cake left. Which, obviously, I ate. This says more about my family than it probably should, but also a great deal about how damn good this cake is.

Ode To A Wasted Aubergine

The Melancholy Aubergine

Oh look upon this aubergine,
its skin so wrinkled and obscene;
its purple bloom begun to fade,
flesh over-ripe, and soft with age.

Consider now this aubergine;
the days it lived, the fate it dreamed
when plucked from desert, or from snow
(I'm not quite sure where eggplant grow).

Now pity here this aubergine,
victim of kitchen destiny
- had it been avocat instead!
oh tragic tale of list, misread.

Exams have sent me mad. Send help.

Pudding In Your Pocket

There is one thing on this earth (and obviously, I am talking about food, for a change) for which I would sell my soul. Really. Maybe not really. It isn't glamorous (no Daring Baker would look twice at it); it isn't expensive (no truffle oil, for example, or saffron); and it isn't even chocolate (GASP).

It's school apple crumble.

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.

A Rose By Any Other Name Will Taste As Sweet

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.

Do not consider it a horror movie. I'm just saying; because those splashes of raspberry juice and, sort of, scarlet splatters -- I'm sorry. My food often looks like a massacre, but not always this literally.

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.

DB 3: The Phantom Of The Opera

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.

They are, in fact, MAGICIANS.


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.

The cake came out of the oven looking suspiciously All Right. I eyed it pensively, decided this must be Daring Baker magic, and continued on my merry way.

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.

Taken With A Pinch Of Salt

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?

Shall I tell you what I love? Food, Glorious Food, and specifically, Antonia, for giving me this lovely award that it's taken me such a bad-mannered length of time to post about. Thank you so much Antonia!! I have no idea what Arte Y Pico means, but I do speak the language of... food? so when I pass the award on to five other deserving food bloggers - further down in this post - for their creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogging community (I copied and pasted that. You could tell, yeah?) you will know that what I really mean is 'YAY LOVE YOU, YUM YUM HEEEE'. And so on.

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.

I don't know where sentences like that come from, I really don't. Sorry.

Without further ado: I'm making an effort not to pass this award onto people I've tagged before (sorry, because a lot of you really do deserve it. Also I hope I can remember who I've tagged and not tagged before, but can't be sure X__X), so with that in mind, I'd like to give the Arte Y Pico award to the following five bloggers:

Kevin at Closet Cooking

Nilmandra at Soy & Pepper

Maria at The Goddess' Kitchen

Lisa at Spicy Icecream

Grace at A Southern Grace

Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies
American measurements here at Smitten Kitchen
Makes 24

140g plain flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
200g unsalted butter, slightly softened
180g sugar
30g light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g old-fashioned rolled oats
170g good-quality white chocolate bar, chopped
1/2 teapoon flaky sea salt (for sprinkling on top)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or Silpat. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and table salt in a medium bowl.

2. Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Scrape down bowl with rubber spatula, then add egg and vanilla and beat until incorporated. Scrape down bowl again. Add flour mixture gradually and mix until just incorporated and smooth. Gradually add oats and white chocolate and mix until well incorporated.

3. Divide dough into 24 equal portions, each about 2 tablespoons. Roll between palms into balls, then place on lined baking sheets about 2 1/2 inches apart. Using fingertips, gently press down each ball to about ¾-inch thickness.

4. Sprinkle a flake or two of sea salt on each cookie

5. Bake until cookies are deep golden brown, about 13 to 16 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through. Transfer baking sheet to wire rack to cool.

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.

The Right Road

Yep. It's one of my infamous health foods again.

I have really good excuses justification for this one, though! This one has actual fruit in! In a dried, sweetened sort of way. Hear me out.

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.

So, those are my excuses for eating these. My excuses for making them?

...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.