Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries

I imagine that as around 80% of you read this, you are basking in glorious heat. Perhaps you are steaming from the red-hot lasers of the sun's rays. Perhaps you are too weak to lift your eyelids, and are instead resting your sweaty forehead against your computer screens in exhaustion, attempting to comprehend what I'm blathering on about now. Perhaps you are flailing in agony as your blood boils in your very veins.

Yeah? Well, screw you. I'm bloody freezing, and my skylight has started to leak. Welcome to the UK.

It may be monsoon season here, but it's not all bad news. For starters; we're awash (boom boom) with fresh fruit. Strawberries, raspberries, cherries... which apparently aren't berries, despite deceptive rhyming. I genuinely didn't know that, although I suppose the lack of 'berry' at the end of the name should have given it away.

Something else I didn't know about cherries: they apparently reduce your chances of developing diabetes!

The amount of sugar I live on probably significantly increases my chance of developing diabetes. Thus, I have found the perfect solution:

Cherry cheesecake!

No, listen. I have a scientific basis for this, and everything. The cherries, right, counter-act the sugar in the cheesecake. Therefore, you have a completely neutral chance of developing health problems as a result of overindulgence. And by the same logic, surely, the cherries counteract any calories or fat in the cheesecake? You could eat this entire cheesecake, yes, and have effectively consumed nothing at all. Therefore it follows that you absolutely should eat as much cherry cheesecake as possible (within the limits of your stomach exploding, which my cherry vs. sugar hypothesis doesn't cover). **

I've sort of lost my scientific link now, haven't I?

**Disclaimer: Indigo has pulled this out of her arse as an excuse to singlehandedly demolish a cheesecake intended to feed eight people, and takes no responsibility for cavities/diabetes/obesity/stomach-explosion that may occur as a result of you taking her scientific argument too literally. Not that any of those things will occur. Provided you eat enough cherries.

'Ent science a beautiful thing?

There's only one thing better than science. And that's cheesecake.

Cherry Cheesecake Slice
Recipe from BBC Good Food
Follow the link!

A couple of things. 1) Use good quality shortbread biscuits, not rubbishy ones (I have done it both ways, and it makes a difference. The photos are the cheap biscuits - what, I'm a cheap person - but with the nice ones you get a lovely crumbly buttery cheesecake base, so much better than regular digestives.) and 2)Don't put in the oven and then go off to watch telly and completely forget about it - I saved it more-or-less in time, but it wasn't as good as the first time I made it.

Still good though. Still sugar-neutal, this-isn't-going-kill-you, Indy-should-quit-science amounts of Good. Ohh yes.

Fight The Fear Of Filo

I never understood what the problem was with filo pastry (sorry if that makes you want to slap me, cause I know some people fear it. I do avoid yeast when possible, if that helps? I thought so). My mum uses it pretty often, and I prefer it to say, puff pastry. I just never considered it a problem medium, so to speak.

A 'medium'. Ahaha. For my art.

...No, it's okay for me to laugh at that. It's just rude when you do it.



On the subject of my pastry masterpieces (imagine me saying all this very sarcastically by the way, or else you might want to slap me again. Generally speaking I often deserve it, but let's at least wait for the opportune moment), I hereby present to you a work of art to rival the pyramids...

...and also some filo pastry, spinach & ricotta studel affair rubbish.

(I jest, once again. This is delicious). It would probably look better if I were a better cook - I fear poetry is my true calling, sorry everyone - but this doesn't reflect on my filo ability. Or filobility, if you will. I am confident in my filobility. I take pride in it.

*I mean, I do use bought filo sheets. You realised that, right? God, it's like you don't know me at all.

Filobility. Fility. Filability.

The Oxford English Dictionary should just employ me already.

Spinach, Ricotta & Pine Nut Strudel
Recipe from Good Food Vegetarian Summer 2008
Serves 8, 230 cals p/s
Prep 35 mins, Cook 30 mins

1 tbsp olive oil
1 large red onion, finely sliced
2 crushed garlic cloves
15g sage, roughly chopped
350g spinach leaves, shredded
350g ricotta cheese
50g pine nuts, toasted
freshly grated nutmeg
6 sheets filo pastry (about 33x24cm)
50g butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Heat oil in a large frying pan, then fry the onion over a low heat for 10-12 mins until caramelised. Stir in the garlic, then cook for a further 1-2 mins. Add the sage and spinach, then immediately transfer to a bowl. Add the ricotta, pine nuts and fresh nutmeg to taste (I overdid the nutmeg a bit) and season well.

2. Lay two sheets of filo pastry on the work surface with the long side nearest you, and overlapping by 2.5 cm to make one double width sheet. Brush with a little of the melted butter. Top with two more sheets and brush with more butter. Spoon the filling along one of the long edges. Fold the short ends in over the filling, then roll up the pastry.

3. Place the strudel, seam down, on a baking sheet and brush with more melted butter. Scrunch the two remaining sheets and arrange them over the strudel. Drizzle over any remaining butter, then bake for 25-30 mins until golden and crisp. Transfer to a serving plate or board and slice to serve.

Welcome To Wonderland - Party Time!

Dear fans loyal blog readers,

Some of you may know It may come as a nasty surprise to you to learn that my 18th birthday falls on the 16th of August, and that the day before this is my first blogiversary! (I know; my blog and I are twin souls. We're nearly as close as I am with the Queen) (aw, I wish I shared the Queen's birthday. That would be cool).

What better excuse for a blog party, I hear you cry? No better excuse! None at all!

Here's the deal.

I am, despite gravest misgivings, hosting my very first blog event. (At this point I will say, please participate, or I will cry and feel a fool) (Not really) (Well, maybe really). Between now and the 8th of August, I'd love it if anyone who wanted to be involved blogged something fitting the below criteria and emailed me with it, for a roundup on the 9th of August.

My real-life party is extreme fancy dress; imagine a charmingly whimsical (albeit probably with a macabre edge, because I am really a sadist) Wonderland, if Wonderland tripped down Harajuku Street, bounced between Oz a couple of times, circled Disneyland Castle, detoured through the Sixties and ended up in Noel Fielding's wardrobe.

(When describing this to my friend, she gave me a long look at this point and said slowly, '...so basically, you're having an LSD themed party?' Er, yes. Thankyou, Alison).

Anyway, I'd love to have food to fit this theme-in-inverted-commas, and since I have exhausted all my imagination on the above drug trip plan, this is where you come in. The criteria are:

• It must be food that I can serve at a party, since I'd love to try your recipes for the real thing.
• The theme is anything whimsical, weird and wonderful (WWW, since this is my online party. Ohoho. Sorry, I'll stop making jokes).
• Think trompe d'oeil food, layers, spirals, food on sticks , bright colours &c. &c.
• Entries can be sweet or savoury, and in any measurements (I can translate pretty quickly now)

Once you've blogged your entry (including a link to this post, please), email the following to outoftheblue.x[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk with 'Welcome To Wonderland' as the title:

• Your name and location
• Blog name and URL
• Post URL
• Picture
• Name of entry

If you don't have a blog, just email me your name, the recipe and a picture and I'll include it in the roundup.

For more ideas of the kind of thing I'm planning, check out a couple more links - something like this would be suitably random, these are ridiculously impressive, Bakerella should just cater for me already, and I am one billion percent making these.

Really hoping to hear from you!!

Comfort Eating

I think anyone reading a food blog knows that food is comfort. And when things aren't so good, all I really want to do is mix up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and eat it, raw, off the spatula. (Probably not such a good idea when I have a little red bikini to fit into for next week).

But to be honest, I don't have the energy to be witty, or sarcastic, or even really remotely interesting today. I probably shouldn't be blogging (sorry anyone who finds themselves feeling inexplicably depressed after reading this) as a result, but I thought I'd explain rather than just let the blog languish; basically I have a lot of family problems going on at the moment that I don't especially fancy going into in great depth.

So instead, I'll offer you these.

These are based on an idea I had after seeing cookie dough brownies somewhere online (can't remember where; bad luck). I saved the recipe, but somewhere between first finding it and coming across it again a while ago, something very odd started happening to me. It started when I had a bite of a mars bar a while ago and found it... repulsive. It was too sweet.

I've never, to my knowledge, found anything 'too sweet' in my life. Am I getting old?

And then I made 'halfway cookies' at some point; chocolate chip cookie dough with a meringuey topping and so on... and it was just too much. I ate about twelve of them, admittedly, but only because I was trying to work out if I liked them or not (yeah, alright).

And so I made these... less excessive. Don't be disappointed in me: these are based on the cookie dough brownie idea, but obviously I used a plain (ie, not white chocolate or whatever) blondie base, and I changed the cookie recipe I used cause it was kind of spreadable, and I ended up with layers rather than blobs of dough.

The final result is gorgeous, especially fresh from the oven where the cookie-like top is thin and crispy and the blondies are slightly warm and still gooey beneath. But I can't help it. I like the blondie batter warm from the melted butter, and uncooked. When I'm maybe not feeling too hot, that, to me, is comfort.

Cookie Dough Blondies
Blondies from How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman, metricised by me.
Cookies adapted from Chocolate from Parragon books

For the blondies:
120g (1 stick) butter, melted
120g (1 cup) brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
pinch salt
140g (1 cup) plain flour

Preheat oven to 180C. Prepare an 8x8" pan.

1. Mix melted butter with brown sugar & beat until smooth. Beat in egg and then vanilla. Add salt, stir in flour. Pour into prepared pan.

For the cookie layer:
175g (6oz) plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
120g (1 stick) soft butter
90g (3oz) soft light brown sugar
5 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
125g milk (about 1 cup, semisweet) chocolate chips. Add more chips if you want but I wouldn't go above 175g (another 1/2 cup) cause my first test of this recipe used more, and it all sort of combusted.

2. For the cookies, place all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and beat until well combined.

3. Blob rounded teaspoons of cookie dough over the blondie batter, pressing down lightly. You'll probably have a little too much cookie dough, but I like to overdo things. Also I'm not averse to eating the leftover stuff, especially when I need cheering up.

4. Bake for about 30mins until golden brown. Allow to cool before cutting and removing from pan, but they are best fresh.

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.