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!