Something different

There's been a lot of talk in Britain recently about the issue of food poverty. Despite being a G8 country, despite being a supposed world leader with a high GDP, despite being a world leader in global development aid assistance, Britain isn't sorting itself out very well, and there is a growing issue of food poverty here. There are two types of food poverty - there's the type where people can afford to eat, btu through ignorance or convenience, are choosing foods which mean they have a deficit of the appropriate nutrition. But then there's the other type. The type that A Girl Called Jack has documented in heart-breaking fashion in her blog. People who - through circumstances that have changed, through a shitty economy and the crappy state of the banks - are going hungry. Jacks' story is better told in her voice, so do read her blog. She's become the 'face of food poverty' in Britain, which is a title I'm certain she'd rather not have claimed. But her story has helped to raise awareness of what's happening in towns and cities across this country. And her recipes are so wonderfully budget friendly and healthy that they are now being handed out with food parcels across Britain.

The BBC did a special episode of its Great British Menu show a month or so back: called the Great British Budget Menu. In it, three celebrity chefs were assigned to three people/families who were struggling to eat on the tiny budget they had. It was deeply humbling and so very sad to hear their stories. One man, a pensioner, had worked his whole life and paid into the state pension, but the amount he was receiving meant that he could afford little more than packets of soup after he paid the rent on his tiny studio flat with its sad single bed. He split one of those watery packets of soup and had half for lunch and half for dinner - if he was lucky, he could have a slice of bread with it. This is someone who worked his whole life, and now he can hardly afford to feed himself?! That's wrong. As is the family of 5 who - even with two incomes - haven't got enough of a food budget to feed the family healthy meals. Processed food is so cheap. So incredibly cheap. Their budget didn't allow for anything else. And the working single mum who routinely went hungry so that her 12 year old daughter could eat regular meals. I think you can watch the TV show on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM6Vm8M_vnSdMohB99KL7tSEyDXplunNC

The thing that was wrong with this well-intentioned show, is that the chefs were completely incapable of sticking to a budget. One of them decided, to hell with the budget - I'll buy the family a side of SALMON and let them enjoy it (?!) A nice enough thought, perhaps, but a total misunderstanding of the dire state fo these people's budgets. They don't have money to 'splurge' on a big piece of protein just 'because'. They're trying to decide whether they can afford to have the extra slice of bread with their soup. There's no room to run 'just a wee bit over' the budget. It was frankly outrageous (and I was not the only one to think so!) As if that wasn't bad enough, the solutions offered by policy-makers in the show were that supermarkets need to do more. Passing the buck. Well, perhaps, but that's not the whole problem. If supermarkets cut prices, they're going to take that out of the money they pay farmers, and they're already struggling. The bigger issue is that people aren't earning a sufficient wage to account for the rising costs of electricity, gas, rent and food. Salaries have not kept pace with inflation, and since the economic downturn in Britain, the number of people visiting food banks has been rising exponentially.

It all makes me so incredibly mad. Watching the show and reading Jack's blog, I felt guilty at my own good fortune, but also angry as hell that I live in a country that can allow this to happen. And I know many other 'Western' nations are the same. I'm sure there are families in Auckland and Christchurch in NZ who have similar experiences.

Food banks aren't the solution. They're a band-aid on the problem, but until policy-makers can really try to fix this (and not just spout empty rhetoric), food banks are a vital part of ensuring that people aren't going hungry.

A Girl Called Jack posted an idea on Twitter this week. Her idea was that for £3 - the price of a coffee - you could buy sufficient food for 22 meals for one person. She asked people to sacrifice one of their weekly coffees, go to their supermarket and buy these items and donate them to their local food bank. They don't provide a well-rounded meal, but like she said, it's better than going hungry.

I had been thinking about joining a group called 'Foodie Penpals' where you basically send a parcel of nice foodie treats to another person in another country each month with a £10 budget. After reading Jack's post, I realised that I'd much rather put that £10 towards helping to ensure other people have enough to eat. I have more than enough. We are incredibly lucky that we are able to eat whatever we want, whenever we want. The very least we can do is share that. So today I took that £10 to the supermarket and bought some food.

Bread, baked beans, tinned tomatoes, sliced carrots, sweetcorn, tuna, sardines, vege stock cubes, mixed herbs, pasta, jam, soap

To be honest, I was a bit surprised at how much I was able to buy, by sticking to the budget branded products. I was also a bit surprised, once I started shopping to see how expensive legumes and pulses have become. I would always have considered them the lifeblood of budget cooking - protein and nutrition at a fraction of the cost of meat. But the two tins of mixed pulses I bought were the most expensive items in this basket by far - £1.09 each, compared to 33p for the baked beans.

This has become a bit evangelical, and it wasn't meant to. But it's been on my mind a lot, so I wanted to share. Read Jack's blog if you have time. Her words paint a much better picture than mine have. 

Success at Last!

As you know, I've been trying to master the art of the macaron lately. I've been improving slowly, but I had only stuck to one method - the French method. This involves making a standard meringue, and mixing it into the almond/sugar mixture. There is an alternative - the Italian method. This involves making a hot sugar syrup and beating that into the meringue (instead of just using plain sugar). I have been wanting to try this, but the lack of a candy thermometer in the kitchen had kept me away from it. I now (inadvertently) have two thermometers, so today was the day. I based my efforts on Edd Kimber's recipe from The Boy Who Bakes. Edd was the winner of the inaugural season of the Great British Bake Off, and I understand he was known for his macarons. He runs masterclasses teaching the art (enrolling was going to be my next step if today was a disaster). Thankfully, his brilliant recipe has been a success!

Here are my vintage rose and lemon macarons (they actually don't taste like rose because I'm not a fan of rose syrup, and I didn't have any, but the colour is a rather pretty faded antiquey rose). They are shiny and have the wee foot/pied and I am deeming them a total success! Yay!

I'm not quite sure why I was so determined to succeed with this - I hated the idea that there was something I just couldn't bake! Now I'm tempted to make loads of different kinds. I suspect the people in my life might find themselves eating a lot of macarons in the near future...

In which I bake the sweetest cake of all time...

I had an week of epic uselessness. By Friday afternoon I'd achieved bugger all, so I figured that things were unlikely to turn around. The only logical thing was to bake something. The fruit bowl has slowly been accumulating ever-ripening bananas, but I didn't really fancy normal banana cake. That's when I found this recipe for Caramel Chip Banana Cake. You basically make hard caramel which you break into shards, and then stir these through a fairly standard cake batter. The rest of the caramel you crush and stir through buttercream frosting for the top. It's pretty good, but possibly the sweetest thing I've ever eaten. It's so sweet that when you drink Diet Coke after having a piece, the Diet Coke tastes almost sour! Anyway. This is it. I suspect the sugar in it will fuel us the entire weekend - unless we slip into hypoglycemic comas that is.

I tried to get all creative and 'spin' sugar. It wasn't wildly successful and mostly I just made a sticky mess.
Tastes good though

A different sort of project

I have great hopes for my vegetable garden this year - last year's summer was just so terrible that I didn't get a single ripe tomato, and the beans and courgettes were well below par. As we put quite a lot of effort into building our vege patch when we moved into this house, I'm obviously keen to reap the benefits of that time and money last year! So seedlings have been sown and plantings are planned. But of course, there are predators to keep at bay. One I hadn't banked on was pigeons - the buggers completely shredded my purple sprouting broccoli seedlings! A more common predator of course is snails and slugs. We didn't get any last year, to my surprise, but I've noticed a few silvery trails on some of the bean plants this year. I don't really like using pellets or chemicals in the garden - more often we go with 'hand removal' treatment of slugs (ugh). It's rather labour intensive but effective (if a tad gross). But, one of the best friends for a gardener who doesn't like slugs, is the humble hedgehog! These wee cuties love a good feed of slugs so they are perfect garden neighbours.

Unfortunately, the British hedgehog population is in real trouble. Hedgerows are being cut down and the typical issues of urban sprawl are having a big impact. A report I read recently said there were only about 1 million hedgehogs left in Britain at the moment. When you think about how common they seem, this figure is
a real worry. They also had a really hard winter, poor things. Last summer was really terrible, and if hedgehogs haven't built up enough fat stores to weigh over 600gm before hibernation, they usually won't make it to spring.




So - what to do to help both the garden and hopefully the local hedgehog population? Well, build a hedgehog house of course! And that's what I did!

Before the water-proofed roof and floor were finished. Nyx is prowling in the vege patch in the background

Finished! All waterproof and warm and dry and ready for a resident!

Internal shot. The entrance has a barrier because that's how you prevent larger animals like cats getting a look in. 

My carpentry skills admittedly need work, and I was advised by the 'designer' (Andrew), but I built it and I'm pretty pleased with it!

Now all that is left is to fill it with straw etc, and somehow encourage a hedgehog to take up residence. How does one advertise to hedgehogs....?

Not quite macarons

I got a new hand mixer this week. I would love (love love love) one of those Kitchenaid standing mixers but since they are stupidly expensive and all of my disposable income these days goes into this money-pit of a house and I don't really need one, I've settled instead for a lovely Kenwood K-mix hand-mixer. It's cream and heavy and very efficient. Despite the fact that I'm currently trying to avoid eating sugar and vast quantities of creamy stuff, I had to make something to test the new beast out. As I had all the ingredients, I thought I'd give macarons a bash. I'm also contemplating taking a macaron 'workshop', but before I fork out cash for learnin', I thought I should try to make them myself a few times.

I have made macarons once before and they were a total, utter fiasco (really - there was nothing at all redeeming about them). I'm given to understand that with this particular French pastry, practice makes perfect, so I thought I'd give it another go. Now, as you might know, there are two very distinct methods when it comes to these pesky wee bites: you can make them 'French-style' which is basically, whip a normal meringue and then fold through the dry ingredients, or you can do an Italian meringue which involves beating a sugar syrup into the meringue and then folding in the dry ingredients. I strongly suspect the latter is the more reliable recipe, but I don't currently have a sugar thermometer so I couldn't try that. Instead, I went with Felicity Cloake's "Perfect Chocolate Macaron" recipe - letting her do all the hard work of recipe trialling.

And, well. They're weird. They look more like chocolate whoopie pies than anything

Pierre Hermé would sell. They're much too big, for a start. And I over-cooked them, so they were oddly hard and crunchy in places. I clearly had the oven too hot, because the surfaces cracked. And they never developed the 'feet' they are meant to do, despite dropping the tray a couple of times and leaving them for about 45 minutes to develop a skin before baking. I'm not certain how to fix that part of the problem. I wonder if I beat the mixture just a couple of turns too much, thus making it a wee bit too runny (and accounting for the spread and the lack of hoofs?). 

Bad pic sorry - it was after 10pm and I wanted to go to bed, not shag around with the camera

Despite their many flaws, they are a vast improvement on my first attempt months ago. And they are really yummy - in fact, Andrew particularly likes them (he's a big pavlova fan, preferring his 'pavs' chewy, so a tiny chocolately mini-pav was right up his street. He's taken the leftovers to work for lunch!).

But I will have to try again. And acquire a sugar thermometer so I can test out the Italian vs French hypothesis. 

Proper Pita Bread

My Mum always made various homemade breads when I was growing up - I don't ever remember eating a pizza that wasn't homemade, and pita breads were also a pretty regular occurrence. In fact, one of my earliest (and haziest) cooking memories is making pita bread with Mum. We were eating pita breads (pronounced peeta breads in our house - long 'i', not short) long before they became the sort of thing you could buy at your average NZ supermarket. I'm not sure why - I must ask Mum. I suspect it's probably because one of Mum's best friends, Shirley, lived in Israel - I imagine she introduced our family to delicious bread pockets. My favourite way as a kid - and now - to eat them is with 'Shirley's Felafel', tabbouleh and minty yoghurt, so that does rather support the theory of their origins in our house. I must post the felafel recipe at some point...

You can imagine how distressed I was - having been brought up with delicious homemade pita breads - to taste my first store-bought one. UGH. Cardboardy, dry, bland, stale, crumbly - just wrong in every way. I'm sure if you've never had 'proper' pita breads, then you're quite happy trundling through life eating these sad imitations, but I'm afraid, like so many baked goods, the only way to get really good pita breads is to make them (in my very humble opinion anyway).

It's a pretty basic bread dough - the trick is using a super hot oven so that the flat pieces of dough puff up as if by magic and turn into delicious bready pockets.

I've always made plain white pita breads, but I find myself enjoying brown bread a lot more at the moment and I fancied trying a wholemeal version of my trusty usual recipe. I'm really pleased with the results! The breads are soft and nutty with that lovely sweetness wholemeal flour brings.
normal
If you fancy plain white pitas, just use all white flour instead and exclude the vitamin C (you can make these without vitamin C even if you make the brown version - the ascorbic acid is just useful when you bake with brown flour as it helps the yeast to do its thing in a heavier flour).

Proper Pita Breads

500g strong flour (for brown use 200g strong wholemeal flour + 300g strong white flour)
1 tsp fast action yeast
1/2 tsp Vitamin C (ascorbic acid - I can get this at some posher supermarkets)
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
325ml warm water
2 tbsp oil

Mix the dry ingredients together. Add liquids and mix to a dough. Turn out onto oiled bench and knead for 10 secs. Leave for 10 mins then knead again for 10 secs. Repeat. Place dough in bowl in a warm spot for around 30-60 mins or until doubled.

Heat oven to the hottest you can - on mine this is 240degC (it tends to smoke a bit at this temp, but you need the heat). If you have one, place a pizza stone in oven to heat; if not, heat the heaviest baking/roasting tray you have.

Divide dough into about 9-10 pieces. On a well-floured bench, roll each piece into a ball and then roll out to a flat disc - around 17-20cm in diameter (I sooo didn't measure them. I'm eye-balling it. Roll them until they are the size and shape you think pita breads should be). They should be around 5mm thick. Place each bread 'disc' on a floured surface and leave for about 15 mins.

Once oven is hot, cook the breads two at a time (if you can fit 2, otherwise just one at a time) on the pre-heated baking tray. After a few mins in the hot oven, they should start to fill with steam and 'puff' up. I still get childishly excited watching this happen! I usually turn them oven once they've had a minute fully 'puffed', but you don't have to do this. They need around 2 mins once they are fully inflated, just to be sure they are cooked through. Carefully remove from oven and keep them stacked inside a clean tea-towel - this will ensure they stay nice and soft.

The pitas will slowly deflate after coming out of the oven, but the 'pocket' will still be there when you cut them open. Just like magic!

Enjoy! Really, once you've had proper pita breads, you'll struggle to go back to store-bought. I apologise if I have ruined you, but I think it's worth it!

More eggs and rice for lunch you say? Well, yes...

I realise I'm not very imaginative with my lunches, but hey - let's go with what works! Today there was sushi rice in the fridge, some gorgeous golden yolked eggs and spring greens. So it had to be this:

Stirfried Greens with Crispy Garlic and Ginger, Fried Egg and Sushi Rice served with Chili and Soy Sauces

Real Bread

It seems that Britain has retreated to winter. As I type, the wind is howling, the rain is lashing the windows and I have a pile of expensive plasterboard sitting in the rain in the drive-way getting ruined. Yay mid-summer winter weather.

Destroyed building supplies aside, what this weather does for me is make me yearn for comforting starches and being curled up cozily on the sofa (preferably with a good book and a roaring fire. We haven't yet restored our fireplaces yet unfortunately, so I'm having to settle for roaring central heating). And so, of course, I need bread.

Homemade ciabatta is one of my favourites. This is proper Real Bread. It takes a bit of time as it needs to rise in the fridge overnight, but involves minimal effort (no kneading at all) and the rewards for this limited hands-on time is a bread that tastes and looks amazing. It bears the little resemblance to supermarket-bought ciabatta which are almost always fluffy and dry. This has a moist, chewy crumb with big holes, just perfect for holding pools of melted butter or olive oil. It's also perfect for steak sandwiches which I plan on making for dinner tomorrow night...if there's any bread left by then.

This is my recipe - it makes 2 huge loaves, so you could halve it. But bread freezes well, and while this isn't hard, it can be a bit messy, so I always make one mess and two loaves and have one stashed away in the freezer for the next miserable day!

Ciabatta

Ingredients
900g strong white flour
1 tsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast
2 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
700ml warm water

Place dry ingredients in a very large bowl (truly - go for the biggest you can find. It will look too big, but the dough rises a LOT). Mix together. In a jug, measure the water and add oil to it. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry. Using a strong spoon (I use a wooden one), mix everything together until it resembles a wet, sticky mess. It will look like you need another 500g flour, but under NO circumstances should you add flour. I don't knead this bread - I really just beat it as best I can with the spoon for a couple of minutes. Poke, prod, beat, mix, stir - whatever you can manage, so that everything is combined and it's had a bit of work. It really is much too sticky to try and knead and I've found it to be perfectly fine without this step, so trust me!
Cover the bowl with cling-film and leave it in the fridge overnight.

When you take it out the next day, you'll have a giant bowl of bubbly batter. It won't look much like bread dough. Don't worry!

The dough after 8-12 hours in the fridge

Heavily flour your bench. Place two tea-towels on the bench and shape them into sort of baskets (see picture for what I'm talking about). Heavily dust with flour - you really need to be quite liberal here. You're going to flip the bread off the towels later, so don't skimp. Gently tip your dough/batter onto the bench and divide in two (I use a dough scraper tool for this and it's very easy). Try to avoid knocking the air out of the dough - that's the key to the holey texture, so just be gentle. I cut my dough lengthwise so that each piece is roughly rectangular shaped, but either way, shape into a rectangle/slipper shape and place on the tea towel. It should look something like this (don't worry about the funny lumps and bumps - the top will become the bottom later on. And in any case, real bread ought to be slightly odd looking!):

Leave entirely alone for 1 and a half hours. Heat oven to 240degC with a baking tray in the oven. I also put another small tray in the bottom of the oven with some water in it - to create steam (which gives a good crust on the bread). Once the dough has had its hour and a half, and the oven is hot, remove hot baking tray and very carefully flip/turn your bread onto the tray. This does take a bit of aim, so it's possible you will make a mess your first time. Bake it even if it's half hanging off the tray - it'll look weird but still taste good! Gently (and with the sharpest knife you own), cut two slashes into the dough so the steam can escape.

Bake for 15 mins at 240degC, then turn the heat down to 200degC and bake another 15 mins. Remove and cool on a wire rack until ready to eat. Then enjoy some fantastic real bread - just try to resist!

California Rolls

There were always bound to be kitchen casualties in the Great Renovation of 2012/13. Today I discovered one thing that did not make it through the process. I can't believe this but...I've LOST my sushi mat! Talk about your first world problems: seriously - what a pain in the arse!

Anyway, not one to be held back by a lack of equipment (or indeed a kitchen), I used some cling film and made my first California Sushi roll for lunch. Granted it was bit more rustic than it should have been using this method, but it still tasted great.

I really will have to get a new mat though...

How to Cook

Delia Smith has been commenting on (lamenting?) the British public's lack of cooking skills this week (you can read a Guardian piece on her thoughts here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/may/14/delia-smith-masterchef-intimidates-aspiring-cooks). It's an interesting argument actually. Masterchef is a show that has increasingly bugged me for this reason. I caught a few episodes of New Zealand's version when I was home a few weeks ago, and found it hair-pullingly bad. Contestants who - from what we are told - are complete amateurs (self taught home cooks with aspirations to chefdom), are told to make something obscure and then are completely ripped apart by the judges. There's zero constructive criticism, zero intervention and guidance during their cooking - even when the judges can see that the contestants are heading in the wrong direction. It seems to me that if you're going to have a show like this, then in part its main point ought to be to take really good cooks and help them to learn the skills of becoming a chef - teach them. Give them feedback they can use - hell, allow them the opportunity to redo the test and see if they can improve. Treat it like a training exercise. In this way, not only would the contestants stand the chance of becoming the chefs they hope to be, but the viewers can also learn and see how to fix a 'kitchen crisis' (and see that not everyone gets it right all the time). It drives me mad. Of course, constructive (as opposed to aggressive) critiques and feedback don't make for good television or produce crying contestants, and that's probably the issue.

The Australian version of MC had it right I think - a much longer series, episodes and challenges which weren't always all or nothing (high stakes challenges in which someone gets kicked off every time doesn't exactly offer the opportunity for development) and judges who would actually give advice and feedback as the contestants were working. Of course, now they've sold their soul to the devil and are running a wholly unenlightened series called "Girls vs Boys" which promises to do little more than reaffirm established and nonconstructive gender stereotypes, so I think it's safe to say I'm not going to be watching that any time soon.

So I think Delia is right and people don't learn to cook as they ought to anymore and the plethora of cooking shows hasn't remedied this problem. But my question is, do people really want to cook? It'll be interesting to see how well her online cooking school goes...

The Results of an Online Book Sale

Last week on Twitter, a kind evil person posted a link saying that the Bookpeople were having a sale on cookbooks. This is the result.

It could have been worse - when I first went to check-out, I had 12 books in my shopping basket. After giving myself a stern talking to, I ended up buying 5.

Oooh, where to start?!

Whoopie!

The cookbook I can't stop flicking through at the moment is Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet. It's a book about baking so it has everything from breads to pastries to cakes and biscuits. Almost every recipe sounds delicious and I want to try it, so I'm slowly working my way through it. His bread recipes have featured on this blog before actually, because they are always brilliant. He has a non-standard approach for kneading bread dough which I love, but more about that another day. Today while my other half patiently slogged away finishing the kick-boards for the kitchen units (the bits that hide the legs on the units and block the gaps that the cat can hide under!), I consulted Dan's book and decided I had the appropriate ingredients to make Whoopie Pies. You heard me; Whoopie Pies. Now, these had a brief moment in food fashion's sun about 2 years ago (before they faded under the Cupcake's unrelenting glow), but I am woefully unfashionable in all respects, so I've never made them before (nor eaten them). They're pretty much small chewy cakes that are sandwiched together with marshmallow cream (which does sound pretty disgusting, I will grant you). You can make all kinds of flavours - I didn't have chocolate in the house, so I made one batch of vanilla, and another called "Raspberry Ruffle" (which is just the vanilla mixture with coconut added and then raspberry jam added to the filling). You can ice them, but I thought they were sweet enough without additional layers of sugar, so mine just have a light dusting of icing sugar.

The vanilla ones worked really well I think, but I went off-book in the raspberry ones and added some jam to the batter as well. That made them too runny and so my raspberry ruffle whoopie pies don't have the same cute button shape as the vanilla. They taste good though.

And hey, I'm improving on the photography too (I mean, I'm not going to be winning awards anytime soon, but it's definitely better than some pics I've taken recently!)! I'll take that as a win!

I should have put something in this to show the size - they're just about a perfect mouthful 

Let me eat cake.

Cake has never really been my thing. I would sell my right arm for a bag of crisps at the right moment, but I've never really yearned for cake. I enjoy making cakes and other baked goods, but I always have to give my efforts away. And yet...

Lately I've had the most ridiculous hankerings for cake.* In a rather shameful weekend not long past, I bought and ate an entire (small) carrot cake, and this week I've become fixated with the idea of an American 'white' cake - the type of frosted beasts you see on TV shows. They always look so good, and you know how much of a sucker I am for American foods (see, for eg., Pretzels and Cookies). So, I'm afraid I now need cake. I've had a relatively productive morning (having finished and submitted a paper as well as doing some tedious teaching-related admin), so I think that I deserve cake. I've earned it.**

But which cake to make? Apparently, to achieve a truly 'white' cake, you have to use vegetable shortening, but I don't have any and after the lard experience, I didn't really fancy it. Butter seems a much nicer option. I have a brilliant cupcake recipe from Magnolia Bakery in NYC which I know works, but I thought I'd try something different for this, and there seems to be two distinct schools in the world of American vanilla cake. There's a version where you make a meringue and fold that through the mix for extra oompf, and then there's a very weird sounding version which appears to rely on witch-craft, in which you mix milk and egg-whites together and then just blend them through the cake mixture without whipping. I haven't made either type of cake before, but the second version is just so intriguing that I sort of felt compelled to try it first. It's also the version that various (relatively reputable) baking bloggers RAVE about. "This is the best vanilla cake recipe ever", they cry! "You'll never need another recipe!". With such praise, I really had no choice but to try the witchy cake.

I was very careful in my weighing and measuring. I even followed instructions online for turning my plain flour (normal baking flour) into the requisite 'cake flour' which American recipes insisted upon. When the batter was finished, it did look, smell and taste like a "proper" cake, so into the oven it went.

This is the finished product (my icing efforts, much like my photography, need work...it's on my to-do list!)

The frosting wasn't quite behaving as I wanted it to, but it came out ok. We cut it after dinner (salmon curry with homemade naan) and I was really looking forward to it. A slice was cut...forks were poised...

And then...this. You can see already from the picture of the cut slice that things didn't quite pan out. It's not fluffy, it's not light, the crumb just looked, well, weird.

The taste was even worse. It was awful. Really really bad. Sort of glue-y and floury and just yuck. We couldn't eat it in the end - even the lad couldn't eat it, so you pretty much know it was a singularly bad cake.

All in all, a very disappointing day in the kitchen. There's nothing that pisses me off more than actually following a recipe closely, only to have it turn out horribly. I should have known witch-craft and cakes didn't mix. Next time, I'll go with the meringue version or stick with my tried and tested Magnolia cupcake recipe, but I think to redeem myself a bit, I might make a carrot cake today instead.




* Before you ask, no, I'm not pregnant. I just want cake.
**unlikely 

Never look a gift yak in the mouth

There are some days at work when you feel entirely put upon and under-valued, and then there are days like today when the sun is (sort of) shining and your students are enthusiastic and say nice things and it makes you feel like all the crappy marking is worth it! I've just had one student saying thank you for the module I run and how much he's enjoyed it and how much he feels he's learnt, and another student who was very grateful for my help with her dissertation - so grateful in fact that she gave me a gift. Chinese students often give small tokens to their lecturers - I quite enjoy it to be honest. Sometimes the gifts are a bit quirky(commemorative coins for example), but I've also had several rather pretty silk fans which I've used to great effect on the London tube in summer! Today's gift does not seem ideal for summer. It's snack food from the Chengdu province of China where this student comes from and one of them is a lump of dried black yak's meat. Vacuum packed for freshness. Apparently it's good to break up and eat when I'm drinking wine. I'm mildly terrified...but on a day like today, definitely still grateful. It's the thought that counts after all....


It literally is a hunk of dried meat. What's that quote from Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy...??



See - black yak dried meat. I am rather tickled at the last instruction though: "Eat after opened (bulgy)" - what on earth do you suppose that means??



Hello gorgeous...

Progress! Finally finally we are moving forwards! We now have an installed and completely operational oven! And look how utterly gorgeous it is...

The picture does it no justice at all, but surely you have now come to expect dreadful pictures from me

Oh the baking fun we will have, this oven and I. I truly love it. It's a thing of total beauty - so much so it seems a shame to soil it with actual cooking and grease. I spent much of last night caressing it and at one point gave it a cuddle. I want it to stay shiny and new forever. But as gorgeous as it is (why do I keep saying 'it'? I've named her Josephine...she'll come, in time, to be Ol' Jo), it's once I start cooking that she's really going to come into her own.

I had thought that the very second she was installed, that I'd start cooking with a vengeance, but actually that's not at all practical. We still have no bench or sink and the cupboards aren't yet finished or attached to the walls. So really, any kind of cooking would involve making a giant mess in an already stupidly messy room (it currently looks a bit like what I imagine the inside my head to look like) and that's more of a pain than anything. Josephine will have to be content with heating Waitrose prepared foods for another week I think, but that's ok. It's still progress. And after all this time, any step forward is one I'm not going to sniff at! 

Two steps forward...

The kitchen was meant to be finished by now. Hell, it was meant to be finished by mid-January. But certainly by now. Alas, all it currently has in it is a fridge and one unit of drawers which don't have handles. You see, when we started assembling last Sunday night, we discovered that the company who had planned it, had royally cocked up and mis-measured, such that the new kitchen couldn't FIT in the space allocated. Arggh! Much hair-pulling and yelling and the odd measured discussion later, the problem parts have been returned and new ones ordered which will fit (if they don't, I swear I'm going to strangle the designer and cook him in my new oven). Sadly these bits won't be delivered until Tuesday, so we are delayed even further. There have been other issues in the construction of the units which do fit, namely that the instructions are utterly useless and I'm sorry, but if we can't work them out, I struggle to see how others would manage. We're fairly competent DIYers - I would go so far as to assume that we probably have skills that are a bit above average. But these instructions are like a Byzantine pick-a-path story. God knows how it will all turn out - it's a leap of faith (and I'm not sure that something like kitchen construction should really involve prayers and crossed fingers). The new (gorgeous, shiny) range was meant to be installed yesterday, and then today, and now I am told it will be Sunday. Our gas plumber who is fitting it is leaving for Poland on Tuesday so he'd better bloody well come on Sunday and sort it. Sigh.

I am past the point of sobbing and frustration now really...we are sort of just blankly stumbling along hoping that at some point things will be done. We've run out of gas for the camp stoves too, so we're down to solely food that can be microwaved. Did you know that you can cook tortellini in the microwave fairly successfully? No, me either, but turns out you can. But weirdly, microwaving popcorn has not been at all successful (15 minutes later and only half the kernels had popped. I gave up...) I think we might order takeout tonight - my ulcer has been relatively calm for about a week, so hopefully I can eat a curry without angering it.

Oh, and, in more exciting news, and in preparation for the installation of the new range, I have just bought two new cookbooks: The Boy Who Bakes by Edd Kimber and Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard (I actually already have the latter on my Kindle, but turns out with cookbooks, I can't be swayed from real books. Electronic ones don't have any of the same appeal). Looking forward to their arrival and the frenzy of baked goods that will soon begin...

A page from the Boy Who Bakes. I want this cake more than I've ever wanted baked goods before

Update

The tiles are down, the walls have been plastered and are ready to paint, all broken bricks and other structural problems are fixed, the lead pipe issue has been (expensively) resolved, the new kitchen has been delivered and is ready for construction/installation. Now, if I could only eat or drink, it would all be worth it.

I need to mention here that I'm not as useless as this blog would have you believe. I didn't just forget to keep posting this week...I haven't really been able to eat or drink most of the week (tiny but excruciatingly painful nibbles, sips and slurps here and there - sufficient to keep me mostly functional). So, in light of that, there didn't really seem much point in writing about food or cooking.

I have developed an oesophogeal ulcer which is just about as much fun as it sounds. It's a reaction to some antibiotics I was taking, but sadly it's not an easy fix. Essentially, I have mild to moderate pain in my chest most of the time, which becomes extreme whenever I try to eat or drink (or take a deep breath). It's also involved throwing up and generally feeling like complete shit. And I'm HUNGRY! Gargh. How utterly cruel that we are in the process of installing a new and fabulous kitchen when I CAN'T EAT. What I would do for a piece of bread right now...

Anyway, this is my 'sick note' and a promise that once I can, you know, swallow again, I shall regale you with tales of convalescent foods and the plans I have for when I can eat properly. Something to look forward to! In the meantime, I have a jelly cup with my name on it...

A new trick

Poached eggs are a big favourite of mine. There is little that can beat a truly amazing plate of Eggs Benedict with spinach and hot smoked salmon, served with not-quite-done poached eggs and hollandaise. Brunch of champions! And I do make it myself (since, like so many things, brunch isn't really 'done' here. All day breakfast, you betcha, but brunch hasn't quite landed. Is it an Americanism?) but poached eggs can be a bit of a pain. I do know how to do it properly, and I make them successfully (it really is all about the freshness of the egg) but they are the egg cooking method which takes the longest and seems to make the biggest mess.

Well. Today I fancied myself my standard miso noodle broth for lunch, and I needed some protein so I thought I'd poach an egg. I was all ready to faff around with a saucepan when a rogue thought in the back of my mind started cranking..."can't you poach eggs in the microwave?"

I have had some Bad Experiences cooking eggs in the microwave (one spectacularly ill-fated attempt at boiling an egg in the microwave at university is best not spoken of) and I have a distinct but ancient memory of my grandad exploding poached eggs many many years ago.

It turns out, though, that some clever creatures have more recently worked out how to poach an egg wonderfully in the microwave. Much less fuss and clean up - and (breathless, hungry pause), it takes about 60 seconds. That's seriously fast food. Yum yum!

Basically, you crack an egg into a microwave-safe bowl. Cover with 1/3c water, add a tsp of vinegar, cover the bowl and microwave on high for 60 secs (my microwave is about 800W). This gives you an egg which has a fully set white and the yolk is still a tad wobbly at the top, but is mostly cooked through (which is how I like them). If you like it softer, cook it for 40 secs on medium, and then give it 20 sec extra bursts until it's as you like it.

I love learning new ways of cooking which you know you will use again and again. Trying new recipes is all well and good, but it's the small things like this which change the way you cook and eat, I think.

Anyway, here's today's lunch.

Look at it, the gorgeous cheeky egg! 

Mastering the Microwave

I said in an earlier post that I'm not really a big microwave user. I have one largely for softening butter to smear on bread and for reheating rice or leftovers. That's pretty much my microwave repertoire. But given the current situation, I thought it might be sensible to try cooking other things in it, and last night was my first proper effort.

I took inspiration from Ken Hom on BBCGoodFood http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1391/steamed-salmon-in-the-microwave- but I tweaked it a bit.

Microwaved Steamed Salmon

Slice 250-300g skinless salmon fillets into chunks (roughly an inch square?) and scatter with chopped ginger, garlic and spring onions. Cover with cling-film and refrigerate for a few hours.

Mix together 3 tbsp sweet chilli sauce, 1-2 tbsp lime juice and a splash of soy sauce. Set aside.

When you are ready to eat (and I do mean ready - side dishes all cooked and ready to be dished up), place plate of salmon in microwave and cook for 1 min 30 secs. I checked after 1 min, and if it had just been me eating, I might have stopped the cooking then because I like my salmon a bit more rare than does my partner. At 1 min 30 secs, the salmon will be cooked all the way through and will still be soft and flaky. Pour over the chilli/lime sauce and scatter with plenty of chopped fresh coriander. I served it on jasmine rice and alongside plenty of stir-fried greens in a meal that felt really rather virtuous!

This was a bit of a revelation actually - stupidly quick, healthy, delicious and no stinky salmon oil smells (which is important when you are cooking in a spare bedroom and you don't want all your jackets and coats to smell of fish!). Now, what else can I 'zap'...??

My favourite no-cook lunch

Again, this isn't really a recipe, but I love it and eat it regularly when I work from home. It's also perfect when you're trying to cut down on the actual cooking you do (gosh that seems a strange sort of comment to come from me!). This time I made it with tofu because I bought some and figured I ought to use it, but if I have an actual kitchen at my disposal, I often poach an egg and serve that on top instead of tofu.**

Miso Soup for One

Soak one small packet of rice vermicelli noodles in just-boiled water (I buy packets of noodles at the Asian grocer which are single portions, but if you can only get large packets, aim for around 50g noodles). After 3-4 mins (they should be quite al dente as they will soften further in the soup), drain. To the bowl, add 2 tbsp miso paste, a sprinkling of dried seaweed and a good handful of fresh spinach. Stir vigorously until the miso is dissolved (this can take a couple of mins - it's pesky stuff). Add in chopped tofu and chopped spring onions. Protein-packed and delish with no-cooking and in under 5 mins. Good stuff.

Yet another sublimely bad picture. I did actually find the camera (or one of them) and took another pic, but it was even worse. Apparently I don't take good photos when I'm hungry! 

**I now have 3/4 packet of tofu to use. Any suggestions??

The Only Chocolate Cake Recipe You Will Ever Need

This is easily the best home-made chocolate cake I've eaten - it's rich, moist and delicious. If you sandwich it with icing and frost the top, it looks seriously impressive, and the best part is that it's stupidly easy to make - no creaming butter and sugar! The recipe does require a food processor, but if you don't have one, just beat everything together vigorously with a wooden spoon until smooth and thick.

Kick-Ass Chocolate Cake

1 2/3 cup plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda (bicarb)
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups milk (I use skimmed but I doubt it would be a problem to change)
100g melted butter
2 eggs
1 tsp good vanilla

Icing
100g butter softened
250g icing sugar
1/3 cup cocoa
dash of milk
1 tsp good vanilla

Heat oven to 180degC. Grease 2x 20cm cake pans and line with baking paper (or one deep 20cm cake pan - I make two smaller cakes rather than splitting the bigger one, but use what you have. Actually I've made this in various tins and it's always good - you'll just have to adjust the cooking times).

Bung all the cake ingredients into a food processor or bowl and mix. Once it's combined, I mix for around 30 secs. It should be a smooth, thick, pale brown, rather wet mixture. Pour into prepared tins.

If you are using 2 smaller tins, it'll take around 30 mins in the hot oven. If you are baking one large cake to split, it'll take around 50mins. But check the cake is done with a skewer before removing from oven.

Leave in tins for 5 mins, then turn out and allow to cool completely before icing.

To make the icing, bung the icing sugar, cocoa and softened butter into food processor. Add vanilla and a dash of milk and blend until smooth and frosting-like. Again, just beat together in a bowl if you don't have a food processor. You can use this icing for both the top and the filling of the cake. I sometimes fill the centre of the cake with jam and cream instead, and then frost the top, but it is rather deeply delicious having frosting in the middle and on the top.

And it's done. I am pretty sure you will never make another chocolate cake again once you've done this one! 

Day ?? Smoked Salmon "Carbonara"

This post comes with an apology to all Italians and all of those who feel strongly about not destroying the culinary heritage of such a proud food nation. I have forgotten entirely what we ate the past few days, but I do remember Sunday night's almost-no-cook meal, so thought I'd post it. It's a sort-of carbonara but it's bastardised beyond all recognition from the original, and for that I'm sorry. I love proper carbonara, made with salty dry-cured organic no-nitrates bacon (I prefer bacon to pancetta, I've discovered after much trial and error), eggs and parmesan with nothing more added than some black pepper and sea salt. This is nothing like that. But it's delicious and quick and the only cooking involved is boiling the pasta (which, when you are working on renovating your kitchen until 9pm without realising the time or the fact you haven't eaten is just what you need!). Here 'tis...

Smoked Salmon Almost Carbonara
Serves 2

250g pasta, cooked according to packet
2 eggs
2 tbsp creme fraiche (or double cream)
handful of grated fresh parmesan
100-120g smoked salmon
1-2 chopped spring onions
100g fresh spinach
1/2 cup broccoli
Black pepper and salt

Add chopped broccoli to the pot the pasta is cooking in - it needs about 3-4 mins.
In a small bowl, beat together the eggs, creme fraiche and parmesan with a good grinding of black pepper. Add spring onions and tear the smoked salmon into small pieces - mixing this in.
Before draining pasta, reserve half a cup of the cooking water.
Drain pasta and return to pot (don't put pot back on stove - put it on a chopping board or similar). Add 1/4c of the cooking water, and the egg mixture, plus the spinach. Mix everything together. If it looks dry, add a bit more cooking water. Stir again then put the lid back on and leave for 1-2 mins. Stir, add more black pepper and salt if it needs it. Serve with a crapload more grated parmesan and enjoy. 

Day 4: Basil and Garlic Meatballs and Spaghetti

Not overly imaginative today, but as I've spent the entire day deciphering students' mysterious arguments about globalization (including, in one particularly weird example, the lack of emotional engagement one has when eating McDonalds' burgers, as compared to meals prepared by "enthusiastic housewives". Hm), I felt carbs and comfort food was needed. So, this enthusiastic non-housewife decided to make emotionally-connected meatballs!

Basil and Garlic Meatballs and Spaghetti
Serves 2

250g free range or organic pork mince
3 finely chopped spring onions
3 cloves garlic, crushed
handful of basil leaves
small handful of grated parmesan
salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients (using the stalks of the basil, finely chopped, while reserving the leaves for the sauce) together with your hands making sure it's all combined. Mix into small meatballs (teaspoons of mixture roughly). Fry in a tbsp olive oil on a medium heat until browned on all sides...



...then add a jar of passata (or tomato puree - not tomato paste), a tsp sugar, salt and about a tbsp of balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar. Simmer for about 10 mins or until the sauce has thickened slightly and the meatballs are cooked. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. Stir through the leaves of the basil and if you fancy it, some fresh spinach.

Serve with spaghetti, a drizzle of olive oil and a generous grating of parmesan. You can't have too much parmesan in my book.

Day 3: Thai Curry Laksa

I've got a head cold at the moment. Nothing that's likely to kill me or anything, but I feel a tad poorly and snotty, so last night I thought a good spicy soup would be just the thing. And rice vermicelli noodles have the added benefit of needing no actual cooking - perfect for the temporary kitchen! It's not really a recipe, but here it is anyway:

Thai Curry Laksa

Pour boiling water over rice vermicelli noodles and soak for 4 mins or so. Leave them slightly chewy as they will soften more once they're in the soup.

Cook chunks of butternut squash (or pumpkin) in microwave with small amount of water for 3 mins.

Saute sliced onion, add green curry paste, garlic and coriander stalks, and sliced chicken (or prawns if you're not allergic) and fry until fragrant. Add 1 tin of coconut milk, half a can of water, a pile of vege (I used broccoli, mange tout, baby corn and green beans), a handful of kaffir lime leaves (essential!) 2 tbsp fish sauce, 1 tbsp brown sugar and the juice of half a lime. Simmer 5 mins or until vege are tender. Add a large handful of fresh spinach, the cooked butternut squash, coriander leaves and bean sprouts. Pour soup over drained vermicelli noodles and add the vege/chicken to the bowl. Slurp and enjoy!

Sushi for beginners

I love sushi. It's one of the things I miss most about New Zealand - there, sushi is cheap and readily available and - more importantly - fresh. The stuff you can buy at supermarkets and the likes in Britain tastes like Styrofoam and I'm always seriously dubious about its freshness. The only time I can get fresh sushi living where I do (it's different if you live in London - you can get everything in London) is when I go to Milton Keynes where they have a Yo!Sushi which is a sushi restaurant chain. It's nice but quite expensive (if you eat as much as I do) and we really don't go to Milton Keynes that often anymore. So I get sushi hankerings. Today I'm rather proud to say, I made my first homemade sushi to actually taste like proper sushi. I've made it in the past, but it always lacked something. Not sure what I did differently today, but it was great! And so pretty I had to share. What a feast!

Oh, and the rice came from a bag of sushi rice I had cooked and frozen last week - even someone with as little grasp on reality as me wouldn't cook sushi rice for herself for lunch (Ok, sorry, that's patently untrue - I've done this many times, but I wouldn't do it in a temporary kitchen. I do have limits to my crazy).

Et voila! Or, Yo! It's sushi!

Fresh yellow-tail tuna and avocado sushi

Making Do

A sensible person would probably just eat takeaways for the few weeks we will be without a kitchen. And am I sensible? No indeedy. No, what I have done instead is recreate a kitchen in our spare bedroom. It is indoor camping if you like (although my partner assures me that if this is my idea of camping, then I am sorely out of touch with the majority who survive camping adventures on tins of baked beans and charred sausages).

Let us take a tour around the temporary digs, shall we? Once again I apologise for the appalling quality of photos - we really need to find the battery charger for the camera...

The "Kitchen" 

The "bench", featuring: chopping board, lovely loaf of bread from Gail's bakery (dark sourdough - yum!), small camp stove, coffee pot. 

The "Pantry", featuring: (on upper shelf) booze, Sodastream maker, spare coffee pot, more booze, soy sauce, vinegar, rice wine etc etc; (on lower shelf): cereal, pepper, marmalade, vegemite, coffee, sugar, panetonne, pickled ginger, chutney, popcorn and assorted other 'essentials'. 

The "Oven" featuring, the microwave, toaster and kettle. And our wicked 1960s radio which I got at the lovely vintage shop in Towcester. And yes, those are cabinets from the old kitchen which I dragged upstairs one afternoon. They house the china, darling. 

The "Stovetop" featuring, the larger camp stove, toastie-maker (essential for weekend lunches when one spends the weekend putting up plasterboard and/or plumbing/wiring), fruit bowl, water purifier (ok, I'm starting to see why my idea of camping may not be 'normal'), Magimix (this isn't actually being used - I just didn't have anywhere else to put it). 

So that's it. Them's the cooking facilities for the next few weeks. While it's not exactly roughing it, nor it is entirely simple to cook. I don't have an oven, so everything has to be cooked in a pot (or in the microwave - which I'm afraid I usually use solely for reheating rice, softening butter and occasionally defrosting meat). I only have 2 gas rings, which is plenty most of the time, but whatever I cook has to be relatively quick because the gas doesn't last that long (and it's expensive). Cleaning up is also a challenge because we have to do it in the bathroom (you'll have noted the absence of the kitchen sink in the pics) and as we recently installed a new bathroom, I'm terrified we are going to drop a plate on the lovely new porcelain sink and break it (the sink, not the plate - plates are easy to replace...sinks, not so much).

The challenge is to try and avoid too many ready meals or takeaways during this time. I am going to use quick cheats like the odd fresh pasta sauce, gourmet prepared soup (because slow cooking lentils or barley on the camp stove doesn't seem sensible) and fresh pasta instead of dry (because it cooks more quickly). Before the old kitchen was ripped out, I also cooked a load of rice and froze it in meal-sized portions so that I wouldn't have to do too many dishes each meal. Once that runs out I will have no qualms about buying ready-cooked rice for the same reason.

I suspect we'll be eating quite a few stirfries and pasta meals, but hopefully I can keep things varied enough that we don't go mad. So far we've had salmon tikka curry with paratha (which doesn't sound too hard-done-by, does it?) and a rather odd meal of pasta with meatballs made from leftover (frozen) Christmas stuffing. Tonight I'm not sure - probably a stirfry with chicken. I'll keep you posted. If you have any suggestions for quick, easy and tasty one-pot meals, I'm all ears! 

These are the cakes of our life

I haven't had a completely useless year food-wise (though close to it). There have been cakes, and these are some of the nicer ones. The recipe for Andrew's birthday cake (white chocolate and raspberry mousse cake) is below. Just think, once the new kitchen is finished, I'll be able to bake 2 cakes at once. That's the stuff frosting-dreams are made of!

Chocolate Cake. Not sure why.
This is my go-to, never-fail,  rich,delicious and foolishly simple chocolate cake recipe. I must post that, actually. 

Andrew's Birthday Cake: White Chocolate and Raspberry Mousse

My friend Rosie's Birthday Cake
(in 2012 she shared her birthday with  the Queen's Jubilee Celebrations, so really, I had to do it!)

White Chocolate and Raspberry Mousse Cake

I made this cake in an attempt to recreate a cake Andrew had once bought me for my birthday (the final year of my PhD on a now infamous birthday which involved me having an epic melt-down of sobbing, snot-laden proportions). The cake was the one truly lovely thing about the whole day and neither of us have ever stopped thinking about how good it was (the cake that is, not the snot-covered PhD candidate). This is actually my first ever baking invention (not that I can claim to have invented the cake part - that's pretty much a basic vanilla genoise sponge) - and I was pretty happy with it. I actually soaked the sponge slices with vanilla syrup before putting the mousse layers on, but I wouldn't bother next time - the mousse provides more than enough flavour and moisture. 

Cake Recipe

4 Eggs

155g (3/4 cup) caster sugar

115g (3/4 cup) plain flour

35g (1/4 cup) cornflour

50g butter, melted

Preheat oven to 180°C. Brush a round 22cm (base measurement) cake pan with melted butter to grease. Line the base and side with non-stick baking paper.

Beat together the eggs and sugar in a medium bowl until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is thick and pale (I actually did this in my food processor. Sift the flour and cornflour over the egg mixture and use a large metal spoon to gently fold until just combined. Add the butter and fold until just combined. Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake in oven for 30-35 minutes or until the surface is dry and the cake springs back when lightly tapped. Set aside for 5 minutes to cool before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Mousse Recipe

300g frozen raspberries, thawed

100g white chocolate, finely chopped

2 tbs boiling water

3 tsp powdered gelatine

250ml (1 cup) double cream

2 eggs

100g (1/2 cup) caster sugar

To make the mousse, put the raspberries in the bowl of a food processor and process. Strain through a fine sieve over a bowl and throw out the seeds.

Put chocolate in a medium heatproof bowl over a saucepan half-filled with simmering water. Stir for 5 minutes or until the chocolate melts and is smooth.

Place the water in a small glass and sprinkle over the gelatine. Stir until the gelatine dissolves.

Beat the cream in a medium bowl until soft peaks form.

In a different bowl and with a clean beater, beat together the eggs and sugar in a bowl until thick and pale.

Add the egg mixture to the melted chocolate and stir until just combined. Add the raspberry mixture and gelatine and gently fold until just combined. Add the cream and fold until just combined.

Line a round 22cm (base measurement) cake pan with plastic wrap, allowing the sides to overhang. Use a large serrated knife to cut the cake into 3 even layers. Place the top layer, cut-side up, in the lined pan. If you want, you can brush the sponge with liquor (raspberry vodka would be great I guess!) or sugar syrup (I used a simple vanilla sugar syrup). Spoon half the raspberry mousse over the top and smooth out. Repeat layering with remaining cake and raspberry mousse, finishing with a layer of cake.

Raspberry Jelly Topping

300-400g raspberries (fresh or frozen), thawed

Icing Sugar (to taste)

1 sachet of powdered gelatine

Process the raspberries until smooth, and then push through a sieve as before – discard the seeds. Put liquid in a pot and bring to the boil. Add enough sugar so that it is slightly sweetened, but still sharp (provides a good contrast to the sweetness of the cake). Boil the mixture down by about half so that it is concentrated, then sprinkle over the gelatine (while mixing!) – mix in thoroughly. Set aside to cool for a while – I actually left it about an hour. Then carefully pour over the top of the cake. It will seep down the sides a little bit but not too much if the cake tin is a good fit.

Place in the fridge for 6 hours or overnight to set. I wouldn’t cover it until the jelly is set, or you will get marks on the top.

If you want, you can decorate it with grated white chocolate. I made a basic runny icing which I smoothed around the sides of the cake (to give the chocolate something to stick to) and then sort of pressed finely grated white chocolate all around it. It was quite messy, but eventually coated it. I guess alternatively, you could make a vanilla buttercream and smooth that around it, or a white chocolate ganache J