Photo diary: week 41, project 365

 

We have a new cafe in town - Coffee #1. Apparently, it's a chain, though I haven't heard of it before. My kid was very eager to try it. Don't know if we really need yet another cafe in town, but as the building at the Market Square was empty for a long time, it's better than nothing.

I liked the décor, with mismatched tables and chairs, funky murals depicting the local history, and especially the big book shelves at the back of the cafe.

Eddie pronounced his hot panino edible but not particularly exciting. He loved the Halloweed crunch, which was like a heavy wet brick with icing and decorations (it was awful, honestly). And the coffee was not very good. A mixed bag - we liked the location and interior but food and drink, not so much.

On Monday I spent a long time, traipsing from one shop to another to try to find a winter coat. I don't want a parka or a long puffer coat which makes you look like you are wearing a duvet. I also don't want a winter coat with only one button - perhaps OK, if you step out of the car straight into your office, but for someone who walks everywhere in town, I need a coat that would protect me from the gusts of wind, and thus needs to have several buttons. I am not over-keen to buy a coat online, as I'd like to try it on before buying. 

For example, this coat from Phase Eight looked good on the hanger (love the 1940s shoulders), and was OK from the front. Sadly, from the back it bubbled up, so I looked like the Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Back to square one. 

For Tuesday's evening, when Eddie and I watch the GBBO and have a good giggle at the bloopers, I baked some spicy almond butter cookies. They were supposed to be gingerbread men, but I forgot to buy the ground ginger, oups. Talking about the bloopers...

I used a coconut almond butter from Pip & Nut, and quite a lot of spices - cinnamon, vanilla etc. 

It was also the birthday of my late friend Anne, who would have been 95 this year. She was the most wonderful, loyal, caring friend, and I miss her so much. 

I walked into town, and saw these white doves by the museum. It looks like one of them has three wings, but actually that's just two doves on one perch.

That's one of the thugs from the neighbourhood who thinks our garden is his personal toilet. The amount of expensive plants those thugs have dug out, the ruined vegetable seedlings, the killed birds left on the lawn, and of course, the smelly deposits all over the place, from the vegetable patch to the path, from the back door, to everywhere else. 

Nothing deters them. I tried coffee granules scattered around the garden, lots of orange peel, they don't care. I don't want to instal the ultrasonic repellent, as our direct neighbours have little dogs, who would suffer. And I can't put anything on the stone walls either, as we have a big garden. 

Spider webs always fascinate me, with their intricate designs and fragile beauty. As long as the spiders stay outside. Indoors, I'd rather not see them. The other day there was a huge one scuttling along the bed, eeek, I felt like burning the duvet and the whole bed.

On Monday I visited a new charity shop, and found a brand new, still sealed Ravensburger Send off for the Queen 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle for a fiver. I'm not in a hurry to finish it, working on it a little bit at a time.

And finally, my red orchid started to bloom. It was given to me by one of the ex-neighbours who moved to Oxford a few years ago.

In the last week I finished reading The girl from Bletchley Park by Kathleen McGurl. It is set in dual timeline: 1942 and present day. I found the WWII storyline more gripping than the modern one, but overall, it is an intriguing and emotional read.

Last night I started reading The forgotten maid by Jane Cable. It's another dualtime story, set in Cornwall. The Cornish setting is so beautiful, vivid and evocative. I wish I could jump on the train and travel to my favourite destination.

How was your week?

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Apple bundt cake

September is a great time to enjoy the harvest. We have five apple trees in the garden. Two of them are "having a break" this year, bearing no fruit, but last year we had so many apples, I was running out of trays and cardboard boxes to keep them over winter. This year the crop is more manageable, which is good.
One of the younger trees is a Golden Delicious apple. My Mum and I bought it in the garden centre about 4 years ago. This year it produced around a dozen of beautiful apples. I've already eaten one, and it was crispy and sweet.
Two old apple trees have been in the garden for many years. I don't know who or when has planted them, these people are probably long gone, but I'm sure they would rejoice, if they knew how fruitful these apple trees are.

They are a late variety, best picked at the end of September or early October. At first, they are pretty sharp and sour, reminding me of Granny Smith's but after keeping in the summerhouse for a month or two, they mellow in taste, turn yellow and become rather sweet.

Yesterday morning I ventured in the garden and picked a few windfalls from the grass.
After watching the first episode of GBBO last Tuesday, I fancied baking a fruit cake (they had some tasty-looking fruit cakes as their first task to complete).

My sons are not very keen on "proper" fruitcakes, which are packed with dried fruit, so my cake is a bit of a compromise, a hybrid of a fruitcake with a Russian apple cake Sharlotka.

It's a pretty easy cake, and wouldn't have scored many points at the GBBO challenge, as it's not decorated, but I rarely decorate the cakes, preferring just to add a bit of icing sugar or plain lemon icing. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the beautifully decorated cakes, like, for example, an exquisite Wedgwood Cake, baked by Anca at CookStyle. Her creation is a true showstopper.

Apple bundt cake
Ingredients:
2 medium apples (about 370g in weight together)
200g caster sugar (or less, if apples are sweet)
60g dried apricots, chopped
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp ground cloves
vanilla (I used freshly grated)
1tsp baking powder
3 medium eggs
300g self-raising flour
185g butter, melted

In a medium sized mixing bowl grate one apple (peeled before), and mix with sugar. Peel and finely chop another apple and add to the mix together with chopped apricots (softer variety; if they are too dried, then soak them in a bit of warm water in advance).
Add all the spices and baking powder. I used a vanilla grater, but 1tsp of vanilla paste or essence is fine as well.
Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Sift in the flour, and mix well.
Finally melt the butter, let it cool a bit, and add to the cake batter, mixing carefully.

Brush the bundt cake tin with melted butter or use a cooking oil spray. Scoop the cake batter in the tin, and place the tin in the oven preheated to 180C.
Bake for 40+ minutes. Check the readiness with a wooden toothpick. If your tin is of a different variety, it might take longer.

Also adjust the amount of sugar, depending on the apples you use. The sour/tart apples need more sugar, the dessert/sweet apples will require less sugar.

Leave the cake to cool in the tin for about 5-10 minutes, then turn onto a wire rack. Dust the cake with the icing sugar.

Serve warm or cold, with tea or coffee. For an indulgent treat, add a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or caramel sauce.

If you're looking for more baking recipes with the apples, try any of the following:
Apple Sharlotka

Belgian Apple Tart

Apple and Raisin Cake

Apple Semolina Cake

If it's the fruitcakes you're more interested in, may I tempt you with:

Boiled Fruit and walnut cake

Boiled Fruitcake

Fruitcake for Mma Ramotswe

Banana cake with salted caramel mascarpone frosting

Caramel, bonbons et chocolat
Par moments, je ne te comprends pas...

I've been humming this old tune since watching the last GBBO episode. Caramel was the theme of week 4. I rarely cook caramel, or cook with caramel, but I do have a good recipe for Millionaire's shortbread with Terry's Chocolate Orange.
I like salted caramel flavours, but my homemade caramel is inferior to bought varieties, so typically I just buy a jar of Bonne Maman Salted Caramel or Waitrose own caramel sauce.

There was a huge hullabaloo when GBBO moved to Channel 4 and got rid of several presenters and one of its judges. I can't say I was aggrieved or even flustered a little bit, as I've never been a big fan of Mel and Sue with their puerile jokes and - though I appreciate that might sound like a sacrilege - I find Mary Berry quite boring too (sorry, Mary).
The current contestants seem to be a diverse bunch. Some friends asked me if I'm cheering Julia on, since she is from Russia.
I appreciate Julia's baking skills, but find her grimaces absolutely embarrassing to watch.
Now that the token Nana (Flo) left, I'm undecided who to root for.

Back to the caramel bakes: I fancied a caramel-flavoured cake, but would not dream of doing any of the spun sugar or fancy caramel decorations. I prefer easy bakes without any froufrou.

Banana cake with salted caramel mascarpone frosting
Ingredients:
2 big-ish bananas (442g weight, peeled - 272g)
150g sugar (mix of brown, molasses and caster)
2 medium eggs
80g Flora (or butter)
200g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp cinnamon, ground
1/2tsp cloves, ground
1tbsp salted caramel, heaped
2tbsp ground almonds, heaped
for the frosting:
100g softened butter
100g icing sugar
100g mascarpone
2tbsp salted caramel + 1tbsp for drizzle
a handful of choco caramel curls (optional)

In a big mixing bowl mash peeled bananas with a fork, add sugar and mix well. Beat in two eggs, and Flora, add the flour, baking powder, spices, salted caramel and ground almonds. Mix together well until you reach smooth thick consistency.
Cut out a circle to fit inside a spring cake tin, and oil the sides and the circle. Pour the cake batter inside the tin. Put the tin in the oven preheated to 180C. Bake for about an hour. Check if it's ready with a wooden toothpick.
Take the tin out of the oven. Once cooled, slice the cake into two layers.
Prepare the frosting by beating together the softened butter with icing sugar and mascarpone, stir in the salted caramel.
Use one third of the frosting to spread over the first layer. Sandwich the second half on top.

Cover with more frosting.
In a small bowl mix together 1tbsp of salted caramel with a little bit of warm water to reach a runny consistency. Drizzle this caramel over the frosting and decorate with choco caramel curls (found in Lakeland).

This cake will keep well in the fridge for a couple of days.

In this recipe I used a mix of three sugars, as I wanted to finish the ends of packets of brown sugar and molasses sugar, but by all means just use a demerara or brown sugar. Mascarpone could be swapped for cream cheese.

Adding this recipe to #KitchenClearout linky run by Cheryl at Madhouse Family Reviews, as I emptied the remains of a couple of bags of sugar, as well as used over-ripe bananas.

GBBO range of gifts and Maids of Honour

Tonight is the GBBO's semi-final. I think by now it's clear who's going to win. If you're a GBBO fan, there is a new range of Great British Bake Off gifts launched in Debenhams.
This range, launching exclusively in the first few weeks at Debenhams, includes cake tins and stands, timers, an assortment of mugs, fridge magnets, a tea-for-one set and a Star Baker apron, with more items to be added towards Christmas.
A good cake tin is a must for any baker. A new personalised cake tin from the new range comes with a whiteboard marker and eraser. Write whatever you want to label the tin - very useful for taking a tin to potluck or school fayre. It is a spacious container, for a good sized cake or a lot of biscuits.

To test my new tin, I decided to follow in the footsteps of last week's challenge.

Last week's GBBO was Tudor-themed, and oh boy, what a creative chaos it was. I did think Jane was robbed of the Star Baker title, as her showstopper looked the part the most. I'm afraid Candice's peacock looked very unappetising, albeit colourful.
Years ago I have hosted a Tudor-themed birthday party for my friends. Here I am, in a Tudor dress, with our friend Cecilia looking ever so dashing as Sir Walter Raleigh.

At that time the Internet was not as extensive, but I did manage to find some articles on the Tudor cuisine, and I also found a book in the library. I remember I baked a cake with dried marigold petals, but I don't have that recipe any longer, and as much as I searched, I couldn't find exactly the same recipe.

A quick google for Tudor recipes suggested baking Maids of Honour - curd cheese pastries, much appreciated by Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. According to the legend, the king went to visit Anne Boleyn in her rooms, and saw her scoffing those pastries. He loved them so much that he confiscated the recipe and kept it in the iron box to be used only for the Royal Consumption only. That's love for you.

There are quite a few recipes around, but that's where the confusion begins.
Some use puff pastry, some use shortcrust pastry. Some bakers add a raspberry jam, the others - quince jam, then there's Delia with a lemon curd.
You can find a recipe for Maids of Honour as made by Richmond House, who claim its roots back to the original recipe. One of the ingredients they have is a mashed potato. Not quite sure about its authenticity then, as potatoes were introduced to Great Britain by Sir Francis Raleigh, so that would be already after Henry VIII.
Then there's the food historian and chef Clarissa Dickson Wright's recipe - her Maids of Honour are made with ground almonds and quince jelly, and not a spoonful of curd cheese in sight.

Having read all the available recipes thoroughly, I decided to adapt several of them.
First of all - oh horror - I used a ready-made puff pastry. Mary Berry would need her smelling salts. But, but, but... good old Delia, thanks God for Delia, uses a block of fresh puff pastry in her Richmond Maids of Honour recipe.
I didn't make my own curd either, a jar of a supermarket own lemon curd worked perfectly well.
I decided to make half a batch with lemon curd, and half - with raspberry jam.

Maids of Honour
Ingredients:
1 pack of puff pastry ready rolled (320g)
150g curd cheese
40g caster sugar
zest of 1 lemon
1 egg
1 egg yolk
20g ground almonds
2tbsp lemon curd
2tbsp raspberry jam

You will need to take the pastry out of the fridge at least 30 minutes before working with it. Unroll the pastry, and using a cookie cutter, cut out 24 mini rounds. You might need to re-roll the scraps of dough to cut out more circles.
Bake in two batches, if using a 12-piece cupcake tin.
Slightly butter the tin before putting the pastry circles inside, and slightly press in to get a cup-shape.
Add a bit of curd cheese on each pastry and spread it evenly.
In a medium mixing bowl beat together the curd cheese with sugar, egg, egg yolk and lemon zest. Add the ground almonds and mix well. Use half of the mix to fill in each pastry, about 1 heaped tsp each.
Bake in the oven preheated to 200c for about 20 minutes until golden.

Take out of the oven, let the pastries cool a bit, take out.
Then repeat with the raspberry jam for the second batch.

Don't worry about the cracked curd cheese, it only adds to their rustic appearance.

Both version were delicious, though the lemon curd variety is my favourite.
And they store beautifully in the new spacious tin.

Have you been inspired by GBBO? What did you bake/

Disclosure: I received a GBBO tin for the purposes of reviewing. All opinions are mine.