White Sauce - Mom vs Margaret

When I was young I remember Christmas dinner at our house with my grandparents from my Mom's side joining us, there may have been a few years this didn't happen but on the whole this is what I remember.  My Dad's parents were "snow-birds" the entire time I was young and went down to Arizona for the winter, I vaguely remember one Christmas with them in Duncan (it might have been an Easter tho) and one year we went to Arizona.  After my Mom's parents passed, we started having the big Christmas dinner at Mom's cousin Margaret's house, although Mom also did a smaller dinner for us between Christmas and New Year.  This is where the great pudding confusion began.  Mom and Margaret both made different puddings and different white sauces but claimed to have inherited their pudding recipes from their mothers, who would have inherited from their mother - who was the same woman, my great-grandmother.  So why were the puddings different?

After I made my pudding this year my sister, Allana, emailed me asking if I was going to make Margaret's as well to do a side by side comparison.  I didn't have Margaret's pudding recipe so I said no.  A week ago Allana emailed me Margaret's pudding and white sauce recipes* - suddenly things took a very interesting turn.  It was too late to make another pudding, it wouldn't have time to mature and it wouldn't be a very fair comparison, but I could do a head to head competition between the white sauces.

The main difference between the white sauces is that Mom's is made with butter while Margaret's is made with whipped cream.

Mom's White Sauce

Cream
1/2 cup butter

Gradually add
1 cup sifted icing sugar
beat until well blended

Beat in
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg (or two egg yolks)
a few grains of salt

Set over a pot of hot simmering water and cook and beat with an electric beater (or hand whisk and very strong arm) until it has thickened and is smooth and light - about 7 minutes.

Serve hot or cold


Margaret's White Sauce

Beat until thick, then set aside
1 cup whipping cream

In a second bowl beat until thick and pale yellow
1 egg that has been rinsed with boiling water before cracking open

Add 
1/3 cup granulated sugar (more if you like it really sweet)
beat again

Add and give a quick stir
1 tsp vanilla

Fold in all the whipped cream

Refrigerate until ready to use


Time for the taste test!

Mom's white sauce made me think it was almost pourable icing and it was thick in texture and very sweet.  Against the rich heavy flavour of the pudding it really held its own.  It also held its texture when slathered all over the hot pudding right to the very end of the eating, a major feat of which to be proud.

When I said it was very sweet though, I think I'd cut back on the sugar a bit.  I don't say that sort of thing casually, usually I don't believe there's ever too much sugar in anything.








Margaret's sauce was lighter in texture and less sweet, the freshness of the whipped cream was a relief after eating too much dinner and then facing down two bowls of pudding.  Against the pudding I thought the flavour wasn't strong enough and it melted into the hot pudding too quickly.

This flavour discrepancy doesn't align with my memories, I remember the sauce working very well with the pudding.  I think I need to add a small caveat here; Margaret's pudding recipe looks like it would produce a less dense pudding with a lighter flavour so this might not be a very fair competition after all.





Other factors to consider:  
>Margaret's sauce was easier to make, but I had two bowls to wash up when I was done.  Mom's was more fiddly and could have the potential to create more dishes to wash than it did but I was sneaky and cooked it over my pot of boiling potatoes instead of getting out a new pot - love a multi-task.
>If I were to sit down and eat just the sauce by the bowlful (which I've often thought would be a sensible thing to do) I'd choose Margaret's.
>How fast can you eat your pudding and do you mind if it turns soupy if you're slow?
>Which do you like more?  Butter or the ingredient that makes butter?

This was fast becoming a draw and my tummy was starting to hurt.

???Who do you love most???

In the interest of science (purely scientific research I assure you, not to force a conclusion so I could stop eating and go lie down) I did a little experiment.  I mixed a little bit of plain cream into Mom's sauce and it was stellar!  It cut back the sweetness that little bit and freshened up the flavour but still had the the heft to stand equal to the pudding's flavour and held up against the heat of the pudding.

The Winner
ME with my sauce that I've just invented!




* Major kudos to Allana for getting Margaret's pudding and white sauce recipes out of her.  I remember hearing Margaret say one year that she posted jars of pudding to one of her own (adult-aged) daughters who was in South America rather than giving her the recipe to make it herself.

Christmas Cherry Cake - Mom

Here's another inefficient Christmas treat that bit the dust fairly early in my childhood.  I understand why this one was crossed off the list, it's fiddly like you wouldn't believe.  Normally I pull ingredients out of the cupboard and measure them as I bake, that's why I note the ingredients in between the instructions, I don't have to go jumping back and forth between ingredients and instructions just start at the top and work down.  I don't think that casual attitude would have worked with this recipe, so I have listed the ingredients first then written out my recipe as I would normally have done.  I have never felt so compelled to have everything assembled and some bits even pre-measured before beginning a baking session in my life.  Shortly after starting I thought it was worth commemorating the scene with a picture.  I also want to apologise for the lack of progress pictures, I like seeing what things should look like along the way when I'm making a new recipe so I like to include them but I was feeling the stress of this recipe.

This cake is most likely single-handedly responsible for my curious love of those sickly-sweet glacé cherries.  It might just be the only Christmas cake I have ever eaten with eager zeal, most of the time I have the mantra "be polite, just chew quickly and swallow, stay polite, don't pull that face, smile nicely" running through my head.  I have to do a lot of that around Christmas food in England.

I don't mean to be down on my adopted country, truthfully Christmas in England is magical in so many ways, people will stand outside in the cold for tree lighting ceremonies and first night of the high-street lights display and smile with awe in the spirit of the season rather than complain about their frozen feet.  They have silly  crackers to make your dinner festive and panto to make you feel like a kid again so you're sure to get a few good laughs somewhere, carollers make the rounds far more often than you can imagine and they even keep alive sneaky pagan rituals that have been sanitized into something fun rather than dangerous.  And unlike the foreign perception of British cuisine there's actually lots of good foods, like chocolate yule logs and potatoes roasted in goose fat and mulled cider and great big wedges of Stilton.  I don't want to be down on Canada either but I don't think I could go back to a culture that doesn't have such a unified idea of Christmas tradition, even if I moved back I'd want English Christmas.  But I can't in good conscience glorify it too much, English Christmas is full of culinary pitfalls for the outsider because for some reason people have this obsessive attachment to historical foods.  Like the Medieval mincemeat in my recurring nightmare of a food - mince pies* - which everyone claims to love but then pulls a face when eating them - don't think I don't notice and I know what that face means.  Or Victorian recipes for pudding that always include candied peel and other ingredients that (once baked and fed brandy for a month) have a semi-soft texture that make you think it's gone mildewy.  And don't forget the food of the devil - sprouts** - if they're so wonderful why do most people only eat them once a year?

Tellingly, the English are always trying to come up with new ways to cook these foods, which makes me think everyone secretly hates them, but no one will make a version without the objectionable and offending ingredients because that would deviate too far from tradition.  With the fourteen billion wonderful Christmas traditions in this country you'd think people would be willing to let go of the few they secretly hate.  So don't make a Tudor era Christmas cake full of weird spice combinations, soggy almonds, and the bits of oranges you normally throw away, make a Cherry Cake instead and have a happier Christmas.


Christmas Cherry Cake

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup milk

Recipe as per usual:

Pre-heat the oven to 350^F (176^C)

Separate
3 eggs
Whisk the egg whites until stiff, reserve the egg yolks for later

Sift the flour before measuring
1 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour

Sift the flour again but this time with the baking powder, salt and nutmeg.
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Put the flour mixture aside but reserve 1/2 cup of the flour separately to be mixed in with the cherries.

Cream butter and sugar well.
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar

Mix in and beat well
3 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla

Add and mix in alternately in two turns
Flour mixture
1/2 cup milk
Start and end with flour and beat smooth after each addition (1/3 the flour mixture-beat, then 1/4 cup milk-beat, then second 1/3 flour-beat, then 1/4 cup milk-beat, then the last 1/3 flour-beat)

Fold in the beaten egg whites (I have trouble folding stiff egg whites but my whisk was in the dishwasher waiting to be cleaned and I foolishly put my mixer whisk in the sink and it was touching other things.  I just know one of these stubborn little marshmallowy lumps of egg white is going to turn up as scrambled egg in the finished cake.  This is not a finished folding picture, keep going.)

Sprinkle over the batter half the reserved 1/2 cup of flour (that's 1/4 cup of flour)
1 cup glacé cherries (1/2 lb) cut in halves (I did not cut mine in half, I wanted whole circles of cherry in the slices of my finished cake not half moons.)
Sprinkle the remaining flour over the cherries - rattle those cherries round in their flour dusting to make sure the are well coated before folding through.

Fold the cherries into the batter until all is well blended.

Bake in a well greased and floured 5" x 9" loaf pan for about 1 - 1 1/2 hours or until done, but be sure to check after an hour.

Results:
Good
It tastes golden+ and buttery just like my childhood memories of it, really, really yummy.  The texture is light and soft and moist all at the same time, and I think with some practice it wouldn't be as stressful to make it in future.  I also have to think the buttery flavour is very impressive given the proportion of butter to other ingredients.  Lastly I didn't find any lumps of scrambled egg white - so far.  I would consider this cake worth making even without the cherries - which brings me to...
Not-So-Good
I had major cherry sink-age and I don't know why.  I gave them a really good dusting of flour, I was even sneaky and put a drop-zone of plain batter on the bottom of the tin before adding in the rest of the batter with the cherries so they were all floating on the top on their way into the oven, but it didn't help they're all on the bottom.  Maybe I should have cut the cherries in half to make them less heavy?  Advice from the clever bakers please!  Also, sadly, I had serious sticking problems when de-panning that ended with a horizon split across the whole cake, so I've gone back and added "and floured" to the greased tin - even as I was greasing the tin I was thinking I should flour it but I didn't because I thought it's a greased non-stick pan, I'm being overly cautious already.

Yeah, I even went looking for a slice where the Cherries hadn't sunk.

If I had found a floating cherry slice I would have pretended they didn't sink.

+I know golden isn't a flavour but I don't know another  way to describe the lovely harmoniousness of the nutmeg-vanilla combo bathed in sweetness except as golden.

* Mince Pies are the most EVIL thing to do to someone at Christmas and I am so glad they died off of Mom's Christmas baking list in favour of butter tarts - thank-you Mommy, thank-you from me and every taste-bud in my mouth.

The Scone Apprentice's recurring nightmare that comes true every year during the Christmas season in England:

host: "who wants some dessert?"

TSA: "yes, please! I always save room for dessert!"

host: "do you want cream on your mince pie?"

TSA: "I didn't think dessert was going to be mince pies..." ... oh no! oh why did I say yes so quickly! full panic internal debate on whether to go for self-preservation and back-peddle with 'on second thought maybe I'm too full' or if I have to ask for two in an illogical attempt to be polite as a cover for the excessive disappointment and repulsion written all over my face even though the polite façade would only last up to the first bite

host: "they're a new kind!" ... there's hope, maybe it won't be so bad, maybe the new change will make it better

TSA: "do they still have candied peel and beef suet?"

host: "yes! and the pastry crust had a layer of grapefruit marmalade spread under the mincemeat to give them a fresh zing!" ...no that did not make it better, that made it the opposite of better - why don't people here eat butter tarts at Christmas?

** the only way to make sprouts non-offensive is to refuse to bring them into your house, and fyi given that sprouts are food of the devil it makes them most inappropriate to serve during the feast celebrating the birth of Jesus

Krumkake or Krumkaga - Mom

I don't think there was a December that went by that my Dad didn't request we have these, but I can only remember them happening once.  As for my sisters, Allana remembers them a few times while Heather has vague shady thoughts of them but no real memory.  To be honest I don't think I'd remember them either if I hadn't helped make them one year.  I have to admit it is still a highlight of my childhood baking memories, taking turns with my Mom operating the cast-iron krumkage iron and wrapping each hot cookie waffle around the barrel of the turkey baster.  I used to chime in with my Dad in his campaign for krumkage partly because anything served with whipped cream rated highly in my books and partly because making them with Mom was such a vivid and enjoyable memory that I wanted to repeat it.  And the beautiful swirling pattern pressed into the cookie from the iron mesmerised me with its old world charm.

It is testimony to how much my Mom loves my Dad that she went out and bought a krumkake iron and tried to make them.  My Mom doesn't do anything if it can't be described as efficient and let's face it, baking cookies one at a time, one side at a time, on the stove top in a specialised waffle iron and then hand molding them into shape is the opposite of efficient.  Given that they were Christmas treats in our home and Mom was responsible for making Christmas happen - everything from decorations, to presents, to the big dinner, to cards for friends and family, to trips to the mall Santa, and to baking - well eventually something was going to have to give and krumkake had it's fate marked early.  It didn't stop Dad from asking.

Last summer I asked Mom if I could inherit the krumkake iron and I think the only thing I could do as a grown up to bring her more joy would be to give her a grandchild.  She said, if it turns out I don't want the iron I can give it away or to charity or the bin man.  Poor Mommy, I think her hatred of that iron and the baking process it represented grew exponentially every time she was asked to make them.  I, on the other hand, gleefully re-packed my suitcase three times to ensure that it would be fit for travel and not put my case over the airline weight limit, it's that heavy.

Once I got it back to London I had my krumkake iron fired up within a few days.  Now here's where my experience with the iron differed from Mom's.  I mixed up the batter and it was quite thick, I had to google to learn that it can be thinned down with water if need be, and after doing so still I had to dollop it onto the iron with a small ice cream scoop.  I remember Mom's batter being really thin and there's evidence of that in all the splatters on the recipe page of her minnesota viking cook book that I inherited along with the iron.  Mom also claims that the high butter content of the batter melted out during cooking, dripping down onto the burner, and sending great clouds of smoke through the house.  I remember the chaos of smoke-detectors and open windows in December while we were making them so she wasn't inventing problems to get out of making them.  I didn't skimp on the butter but I didn't have any issues with the butter melting, out at times I even had to brush the plates of the iron with a bit extra butter.  The only time I had any smoke problems is when crumbs of the batter would flick off the iron as I was peeling the cookie out and land on the burner - those crumbs went up in plumes of smoke and were charred in seconds.  It still took me quite a few attempts to get the technique right but I never had any of the neighbours concerned that I was burning down my flat, as evidenced by my stove once I finished.

Since my krumkake iron is old-fashioned cast iron, between uses I've been giving it a good wipe to get all the butter off then a quick smear with vegetable shortening and reheating to season the plates with a fat that won't turn rancid during its downtime - advice from my Gram LuVerne who is a font of tips and tricks, she's more clever than pinterest.


Krumkake

I cut the recipe by 1/3 because I had no desire to make 60 krumkake and it's the reduced quantity I've detailed here, times by three if you want a mountain of krumkake.

If you have an old krumkake iron, start to heat it on the stove on medium heat, it needs to heat for at least 40 minutes to get thoroughly hot.  If you have a newfangled electric one, follow the instructions that came with the machine.

Using an electric mixer beat until fluffy
1 egg
slowly add in and continue beating for another 5 minutes
1/3 cup of sugar

Add
1/3 cup melted butter - cooled
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
give it another good beating for 2 minutes

Fold in
1/2 cup flour

The batter should be fairly thick, now you get to leave it for about 20 - 25 minutes, it will mature and continue to thicken - which according to my google results is important but if it ends up too thick you can thin it down with a few spoonfuls of water.

Once the batter has rested and the iron is hot, put a small dollop of batter on the iron and close it quickly, give the handle a light squeeze to press the batter out thinly between the plate.  Cook for 30 seconds on the first side then 40 seconds on the second side, flip back to the level side and open.

Peel the cookie off the iron and roll onto a wooden cone (I don't have a wooden one so I fashioned mine out of the core from a kitchen paper roll wrapped in baking parchment) and leave to cool.  Repeat ad nauseum until you've used up all the batter, over all my tries I've gotten between 14 and 18 cookies, theoretically based on the math of the recipe you should be able to get 20, but I'm sure iron sizes vary.  If your iron starts looking a bit dry between cookies give it a quick brush with some butter.

Some were better than others, and some of the results were inedible (which made me popular with the ducks in the park) but I got there in the end.

I ate the first with whipped cream out of respect for tradition, then the rest with fruit, cut up bits of mango and clementine segments in an attempt to make them less unhealthy.  When I was talking with Allana about her memories of them she said she remembered them with cut up bananas so I thought I'd give that a try and what goes better with banana than Nutella!

Christmas Pudding - Mom and Grandma Ross

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas in my flat, that's right it's Pudding Weekend.  You need to make your Christmas pudding at least a month in advance because it has to age, so that means now.  When my grandmother immigrated from Scotland to Canada she started making her Christmas puddings in canning jars. So for my sisters and I, the jar presentation is part of the tradition, passing those two-pint jars full of pudding around the table to help yourself to as much pudding as you think you can fit in the gaps of your stomach that aren't full of turkey and fixings.  What really crowned the dessert, for us, was the foamy white sauce we poured over the pudding, every year I almost expected a war to break out over the white sauce.

Last year I asked my sister Allana to interrogate both my Mom and our (Mom's) cousin Margaret for the recipe for pudding.  Allana craftily chose to ask when they were in the dozy stage of post Christmas dinner food coma, in front of a selection of other cousins for witness and peer pressure, in an attempt to get the truth out of the recipe saboteurs.  It didn't work so well, they kept mixing up the ingredients and amounts, not a straight answer out of either of them.

Mom emailed me her recipe which I then, as per usual, emailed back for corrections of glaring mistakes.  I've also supplemented the method instructions with a bit of internet research because the information I was given was very sparing.  Mom did say she normally doubles the recipe but I only made a fraction of the recipe because I didn't need to make enough for a family.  I'm not worried though, I've got an awful lot of pudding for a greedy girl to eat - mwah ha ha!

Mom's Christmas Pudding

Mix in a roomy bowl
1 cup grated carrots
1 cup grated apples
1 cup grated potato
1 cup raisins
1 cup currents
1/2 cup grated frozen butter (the original recipe says suet but Mom never used that)

One trick I found is to make piles of all the ingredients in the bowl so you can keep track of what you've added, once grated the apple looks like potato, raisins and currents might look a little too similar, separate piles keeps everything in order.

Mix in
1 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp black treacle (molasses)

Leave it all to sit for an hour or two, the liquid will come out of the grated ingredients and form a sugar syrup which will soak into the dried fruit plumping them up.

Then add to the wet ingredients and mix well
2 eggs

Sift together
1 1/4 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp all spice
1/2 tsp salt  - but only if you used suet or unsalted butter (if you used salted butter don't add extra salt)

Mix your dry ingredients into the wet and fill your steaming vessel.

If you want to go our family style, fill canning jars to half full, put the canning lids on and pressure cook for 90 minutes at 10 pounds pressure.  The recipe makes 4 pints of pudding.

Or you can go traditional pudding style, butter either one large or several small pudding basins, fill with the mixture and cover with a layer of buttered parchment and foil in which you have folded a small pleat to allow for expansion, tie the paper on top and make a string handle and put into a roomy pot with a trivet inside it and steam for 3 hours.  If you use several small pudding basins still steam for the full 3 hours.  Check your water layer every 20 minutes or so and top up with boiling water from the kettle as needed.  After you've finished steaming leave to cool in the pot completely, change your parchment and foil lid after cooking for a fresh one exactly the same.

I went for a hybrid method, I don't own a pressure cooker but I did want my pudding in a canning jar.  I filled the jar and used a canning lid but steamed it for 3 hours.  I also had to form a very high hat out of foil for my pot as it wasn't anywhere near tall enough to hold my canning jar, and I didn't have a trivet to put my jar on so I used a pair of chopsticks.  Because I didn't use a pressure cooker I didn't expect the canning lid to seal but it did!

So my pudding is now sitting in a cool closet away from light and heat to mature.  Nothing to do now but wait, oh the waiting, it's like sweet torture.  One thing I'm sure of, I have the cook book with the recipe for the foamy white sauce in my possession, no foiling by the saboteurs on that one!

I started with around a quarter of the jar full of pudding and during the steaming it grew to half full, I probably could have got away with putting it in a pint jar but I wanted the big jar even if it wasn't going to be full to the top.

Cinnamon Birdsnest Cookies with Pumpkin Pie Filling

A last minute invitation to a friend to come over on Monday for a make-shift Thanksgiving dinner meant I had to whip up something for dessert.  I kind of wanted something fun for dessert since it was only the two of us and not a full banquet, I also wanted to send her home with the dessert leftovers and, let's face it, a pie isn't the easiest thing to travel with.  So I decided to make cookies with pie filling.

I made a half recipe of my pumpkin pie filling since this cookie recipe said it makes 36 cookies and I remember that it did indeed make a lot of cookies, but when it came time for the shaping I realized that the cookie size in the recipe was considerably smaller than I'd need to fill with pie.  I ended up with 14 cookies and far too much filling leftover so I made a pie as well.  The cinnamon cookie dough compliments the pie filling really well and makes it less rich than a full slice of pie but still gives you that emotional warmth that you can only get from pumpkin pie.

The bad estimate for combining recipes wasn't the only baking disaster on the day, I also dropped half the egg shell into the cookie batter where it promptly got bashed up by the paddle of the mixer.  I stopped the mixer immediately and started pawing through the batter with a spoon realizing the futility of my attempt to dig out all the bits of shell.  I stared at it for a while wondering what my options were when I decided to scrape the lot out of the mixing bowl and push it all through my sieve, I was floored at the sight of all the tiny shards of eggshell that were caught by the sieve, I wouldn't hesitate to say I got all of it - batter rescued.

Cinnamon Birdsnest Cookies

Pre-heat the oven to 350^F (180^C)

Sift together in a bowl
90g self-raising flour
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp rice flour

In the bowl of a stand mixer, or with a hand mixer, cream together
70g unsalted butter - room temperature soft
4 tbsp sugar

Beat in until fluffy
1 egg

Fold the sifted dry ingredients into the wet until just mixed.

I used an icecream scoop with a 25ml bowl on the scoop to dollop out the cookies onto the baking tray then with a damp finger I made a large well in the middle of each scoop.

Spoon in your pumpkin pie filling into the well, filling right to the top.

If you use my pumpkin pie filling, I would probably suggest multiplying the cookie recipe by 5 times the above amount for a half-recipe, otherwise have a small (7 - 8 inch) pie shell at the ready for the remaining filling.

Bake for 10 minutes.

Chocolate Orange Cake for One

 

A while ago my sister, Allana, and I were talking about all the baking I've done for my blog and I expressed the difficulty of doing all this baking while being a single person.  I'm not complaining that the baking is a lot of work, quite the opposite I'm enjoying this culinary walk down memory lane immensely.  My issue is that when making a recipe that is sized for a family, and even sometimes multiple servings for a family, it takes an iron will for one person not end up the size of a house by having all the product of all that baking in her home.  And despite all my stubbornness an iron will is not something I possess.

This lead the conversation onto those cakes in a mug baked in the microwave recipes that are floating around the internet.  They seem ideal for a single person as they're one serving, I've tried a few of them, they're disgusting, either dry and mealy or slimy and rubbery, and baking them in the oven does little to improve them.  She asked me if I had come up with a recipe for one myself and while I do have a small cake that I make occasionally when I fancy a piece of cake but the smallest I've managed to get it down to is three servings.

With the distance of an ocean and a very large continent between us, we don't send each other many presents through the post as it's prohibitively expensive, the postage has often cost more than double the present.  So we buy presents or do very nice things for each other when we see each other and not on arbitrary dates like Christmas or birthdays, but since today is Allana's birthday I thought I'd do something for her, and this is it, I've developed the recipe for an amazing one person cake and made it wheat free since she has recently suspected that she might have a wheat intolerance.

Chocolate Orange Cake for One

Pre-heat the oven to 320^F (160^F)

In a bowl (either over a pan of simmering water or in the microwave) melt together
25g chocolate (about half a chocolate bar)
20g butter

Whisk in
30g light brown sugar
orange zest from 1/4 of an orange

Let the chocolate mix cool a bit then mix in
1 egg yolk

Fold in
30g ground almonds or hazelnuts - your preference
1/2 tsp cocoa powder (optional, if you use milk chocolate the cocoa powder will make the cake richer, if you used dark chocolate you can omit it)

Whisk up
1 egg white until soft peaks

Fold the egg white into the batter.

Pour the finished batter into a small baking dish that has been greased and dusted with cocoa powder, I used an old small nutella glass jar the size smaller than their trademark oval jar (200g).

Bake for 25 - 35 minutes, take it out when a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Once out of the oven take it out of the baking dish immediately to cool, this will help stop it collapsing down.

Cover with butter cream icing, you can melt down the other half of the chocolate bar and mix it into the icing to make it richer.  This isn't a 5 minute cake like the microwave ones, it actually takes just as long to bake this as it does a full size cake, so you have time to do things like make icing and in my case even candy the remaining peel from the orange.

My decorating skills aren't the best but I've always been of the school that taste is more important than appearance when it comes to baking.  It's a good little cake, well worth the effort to make, and hopefully worthy of being a birthday present.

* Edit *
Allana was so pleased with her present that she baked one right away!  She had a nifty little oval baking dish that worked perfectly.

Master Pastry Lesson - Gram LuVerne

I've re-written this blog post so many times and I still don't know I've got it right, it was just so fantastic to be in the kitchen with my Gram one more time.  It was, by far, the best day I had on my trip to Canada.  We spent the morning making pastry, a lesson I've been pushing for from her because Gram LuVerne is the Pastry Master.  It's been years since Gram made pastry but she still remembered a lot of tricks and I'm the new keeper of her secrets.  I almost don't know where to start with all the tips she gave me.

We made two types of pastry, an egg rich one and a plain one with just water.  And we used the pastry to make two pies, apple and rhubarb. 

Gram's Pastry Recipe

A
Mix together
5 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder

Cut in with a pastry cutter
2 cups shortening

B (rich version)
2 Tbsp White Vinegar
2 Eggs
2 Tbsp Ice Water (or more)

B (water version)
1/4 cup water - to start, then keep adding by the spoonful until the pastry comes together

Add B to A, and combine with a fork, add extra water if necessary.

This is enough to make two 10 inch 2 crust pies with some pastry leftover to make tart shells.

But just writing out Gram's recipe isn't really enough, it's all her tips on handling and working it that makes a master, because pastry is a bit of an estimated art, not the science of most baking.  So here come the tips:

On a recipe this size there's a 1 cup leeway on the amount of flour, the actual amount of flour is 5 to 6 cups.

Use very soft shortening.

At all times, keep the texture of the pastry soft, it's hard to explain this one, it's more to do with the brevity of movements that I noticed Gram using when working the dough rather than the softness or gentleness of her movements.  One hard sweep of the rolling pin to flatten the dough is better than three delicate rolls because there's less handling in one sweep, I hope that makes sense.  Gram didn't have any qualms about being rough with it when she got the speed going.

Cut the shortening into the flour until it is all mixed in but the flour is still mobile, it should only just clump together but if you run a rubber spatula through it it should still look a bit dry and any clumps should break up easily.

When rolling out, use lots of flour, she said it need to ride on a layer of flour.  If it sticks to the board, take a floured knife and un-stick it then scoop flour onto the knife and slide it under the pastry, work your way around the dough wherever needed.

If you get cracks when rolling, don't just press the edges back together, seal it up with a bit of water and dust over the repair with flour.

If the pastry is too dry, instead of making a ball to start rolling, tease it out into a flat circle first.

When making a pie, Gram likes to build up the edge of the crust really thick so it will catch the drips if the pie bubbles up and leaks, if the edge is too thin you run the risk of the juices seeping back under the bottom crust into the pan, and I have to say good luck getting your slice of pie out then.  See how thick she's built up the edge here.

If you plan on making a lot of pies over a short period of time, Gram used to make up a large pail of her pastry recipe to the completion of part A on the recipe, then keep the pail in the garage where it would stay cool.  She could then take a scoop out of the pail and add whichever variation of part B she wanted to mix up the pastry.  She said having it part mixed allowed the pastry to rest before mixing it up fully, so you don't have to rest it later and can use it right away.

Gram also showed me how to make tart shells on the outside of a muffin tin instead of the inside, there's less shrinkage that way.

After the pastry lesson, my sisters came in and we had a cup of tea and a visit, they joked that I had syphoned off all of Gram's pastry making knowledge. I have to say I learnt a lot from her instruction, one pastry was a complete dog and pony show of a disaster where she showed me all sorts of tips to save it and the other was probably the most successful pastry making experience of my life.  Gram served us some of her lemon curd tarts, she's been buying tart shells for a few years now because she doesn't need to have a full recipe of pastry taking up space in her freezer for the few bits that she makes and I think that's fair for anyone living on their own.  However her signature marshmallow meringue, well there are some short cuts you can only earn the rights to after decades of doing it the long way.

Since being back in London I've been watching the Great British Bake Off and have taken an interest in different types of pastry, some should crumble, some flake, and others need to rise in layers, but all pastry should always be crisp and dry and rich.  I have had a few goes at making some of them, I did another run at Gram Ross' sausage roll pastry, which I used to make an onion tart tatin and a small wellington.

I have worked out my issues with sweet short crust pastry (sometimes called pate sucree) which was the killer on last year's thanksgiving pumpkin pie, take a look at my awesome lemon strawberry tarts.  And while this really is bragging, check out how evenly beige the bottoms are.

(I really should remember to turn on the lights when taking photos, those tarts look really brown but I assure you they weren't.)

Today I even braved the challenge of puff pastry rolling and re-rolling six turns to layer the butter and pastry dough and made myself a spinach pie for dinner, check out those layers in the top crust!

All joking aside, I think I really have syphoned off Gram's pastry knowledge, and it's a good thing it went somewhere because she said these were the last pies she was ever going to make.

Gram only helped me with the pastry, I had to take the pies back to Mom's to bake them, but we sent in a slice of each with Dad the next day for her to inspect.  We had a debate over whether Gram would just take a taste and let Dad eat the lion's share of the slices but he came home a bit depressed that they hadn't been offered to him at all.  Gram is very health conscious with her diet, which is probably due part credit for her living into her 90s.  She told me the first thing she did was flip them over and check that they baked all the way through on the bottom, which they did, Gram's clearly a tougher critic than the GBBO judges.  She also confessed that she intended to let Dad eat her slices but that they were too good to share and she ate them herself, and when it's the last pies you ever make too right you're gonna eat them.

Huckleberry Muffins - Mom

When we were little one of the best things about living in our wilderness was the free fruit, expecially huckleberries.  They were like nature's candy, they grew wild around our house and they were prolific.  If the snacks on offer inside the house were sub-standard the huckleberries were a good alternative, often we would be outside picking and eating huckleberries then Mom would call us because we were going to go into town and we'd come back to the house with purple faces, fingers, and clothes and Mom, to her eternal frustration, would have to clean us up.

A few times a summer we could be persuaded to pick a bucket of huckleberries on the promise of huckleberry muffins.  The recipe came from Mom's high school home economics class it was so basic.  The circle was completed this week because we were able to persuade the kids to pick huckleberries on the promise of muffins not once but twice.  And the recipe being basic meant that the girls were able to help!

Muffins

Pre-heat the oven to 400^F (204^C)

Mix in a roomy bowl
2 cups plain flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Make a well in the center and add
1 egg (beaten)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla

Stir well but no more than 20 times, otherwise the muffins will be tough.

Carefully stir in about
1 1/2 cups of huckleberries (approximate based on how many you can persuade kids to pick)

Spoon into a greased muffin tin, makes 12 muffins.

Bake for 20 minutes or until they spring back when you touch them.

Many thanks to Kayla and Paige for helping make glorious muffins for breakfast!

Waffles - Mom

Most weekends had a pancake day but occasionally my Dad's persistent requesting would pay off and we'd have waffles.  Mom hated making them, absolutely hated it.  I tried making waffles once when I was young (sharing my Dad's love of them) and it was a disaster.  I can't remember what the reasoning was, whether it was my inexperience in the kitchen at the time or just Mom not wanting me to make so much of a mess so early in the morning but I made pancake batter and used it in the waffle iron.  It might have worked but I think I opened the waffle iron too early and half of the waffles stuck to one plate and half on the other, and I couldn't scrape them out in big pieces.  I don't remember if I got yelled at but I was told to get the pancake griddle out and make pancakes then spent the morning after breakfast scraping out the waffle iron.  I didn't try again.

A few years ago, Mom's seriously cool industrial-esque vintage waffle iron with its heavy metal plates finally broke.  It did nearly 30 years of service in our family and it was an ancient hand me down inherited by Mom from one of Grandma Ross' friends who was moving.  Mom rejoiced when it broke thinking she would never have to make them again and Dad insisted on buying a new one.

I don't have a waffle iron so I've been waiting to get my hands on a waffle iron to add them to the blog.  I can understand why Mom hated making them, whisking egg whites before breakfast is asking a bit much of anyone, and the old waffle iron only did two waffles at a time so they used to take forever, the new iron now makes four waffles so there's some improvement to the process.

Waffles
Separate the eggs and whisk up to firm peaks
2 egg whites

In your big mixing bowl mix together
1 1/4 cups milk
4 tbsp veg oil
2 egg yolks

Sift into the wet ingredients
1 1/4 cups of flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar

Mix the wet and dry ingredients together until smooth then fold in the egg whites.

Follow the directions for your waffle iron and cook until golden. 
While these stuck to the upper plate, at least they didn't rip in half!

And a double batch of batter made a big plate of waffles for the whole crew!

Breakfast is served and my nephew Parker pronounced them "Num" on the first bite.