Food Glorious Food Archives - Page 12 of 26

The Story of the Cake – Part I

August 10, 2011 By Paola 3 Comments

Yes, it’s that time of year again, where I get to make my daughter a crazy cake for her birthday.

Actually it’s a different time of year this time round, as we couldn’t actually get our backsides in gear to organise a winter birthday party for her, so this year we’re celebrating her half birthday. And she gets a summer party and her grandad gets to spend it with her, so it’s all good.

But I digress. This year a Tinkerbell cake has been requested and I thought I’d go along the lines of the Nemo cake I made a couple of years back – three tiers, green icing and then an assortment of fairies and flowers rather than fish and shells.

I wanted to add an additional surprise though and make the middle tier a ‘rainbow’ cake, as has been demonstrated all over the internet. Yes, it’s going to be ridiculously tasteless and OTT, but if you can’t get outrageous for a six year old’s birthday cake then when can you.

So I set to work. A friend of mine in the UK, who has made a beautiful version, had success using a classic Victoria sponge recipe so that’s what I used. I doubled it (8oz butter/sugar/flour + 4 eggs), weighed the mixture, divided it equally by six (the indigo layer seems to get missed out of these cakes) and worked out I had about 150g per cake to play with.

And then I set to work with my paste food colourings, as you can see above. I ended up with some thin but still springy sponge cakes as a I wanted, so that I’ll end up with a not too steep middle tier. Here’s hoping that the more subdued colours of the outside of the cakes end up looking suitably garish when we cut into it.

More cake madness to follow.

Fancy Hotel of the Week – L’Auberge Del Mar

May 4, 2011 By Paola 12 Comments

We wanted to go to Southern California this year to a) escape the miserable Seattle ‘spring’ (I use this term loosely) b) visit my elderly aunt in Dana Point, an hour or so’s drive south of LA and c) take the Minx to Disneyland.

I was told by friends on Twitter and Facebook that Del Mar was fun and it was suggested that we try the newly-refurbished L’Auberge Del Mar. When we discovered that my very favourite discounted fancy hotels travel site www.luxurylink.com was offering a deal, our fate was sealed.

And we had the most wonderful time.

L’Auberge Del Mar is a historic hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean and right on Del Mar’s attractive main street.

The hotel was completely refurbished in 2008 by interior designer Barclay Butera who has done a great job bringing a historic building bang up to date.

We were lucky enough to have a room overlooking the main courtyard of the hotel, which was been designed as a series of little ‘rooms’, cabanas, terraces and courtyards centered around the small but luxurious pool and jacuzzi area. There’s the kicking Bleu Bar, a scenic terrace for breakfast and informal suppers, cosy hidden cabanas and even space for weddings, all with an ocean view.

The themes of the décor are soft and muted sage-y greens, brown and white stripes and the most breathtakingly lush white planting – white roses everywhere you turn, undulating seas of fragrant jasmine, and hedges of rosemary and box.

To be perfectly honest we hardly left the hotel all week. The place comes into its own at night, when the surfers come in from the beach and le tout Del Mar comes out to party. We dined one evening in the hotel’s top notch restaurant Kitchen 1540, where the cured meats, golden beet salad and frozen key lime pie will live on in my memory. We drank superlative cocktails at the Bleu Bar every night. The hotel is beautifully lit with fires and burners everywhere to take the chill off the evening air as the sun sets over the ocean.

The internal décor is luxurious too – all sage greens, soft browns, seashells and comfy seating. I loved the ridiculously rococo shell-encrusted side tables, the beautiful mother-of-pearl smothered lamps, the green toile cushions and the enormous shell planters full of orchids.

There were little touches of wit and humour everywhere – the wait staff had foodie quotations printed on their tee-shirts and Sofie, Kristy the Marketing Coordinator’s pretty little dog, had a sign at the front desk telling us when she was ‘working’ and available for cuddles.

Finally, and most importantly for us, L’Auberge trod that extremely fine line between being super relaxed and kid-friendly (with unbelievably kind staff and a great kids’ menu) and sophisticated and happening enough for grown-ups – thanks to a fabulous bar, gorgeous spa and secluded lap pool. The Minx adored it and the Husband and I are longing to return.

Truly I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

Prince William’s Chocolate Biscuit Cake

May 2, 2011 By Paola Leave a Comment

When planning our Royal Wedding-watching midnight feast, I decided to try my hand at the Chocolate Biscuit Cake which Prince William had requested be served at the wedding. I vaguely remembered having ‘Chocolate Fridge Cake’ myself as a child and thought that the Minx might like it.

I can now see where Prince William is coming from. This ‘cake’ is obscenely decadent and utterly scrumptious and also very quick and easy to make (though I imagine that the enormous version served at the wedding itself took a bit more time).

I based my version loosely on the recipe given by the Tea & Sympathy tearoom in New York and several British versions. The great thing about this cake is that, since it’s a ‘no bake’ cake – it just sets hard in the fridge – you can be very approximate with quantities and it will still turn out successfully.

The trickiest part for peeps not in the UK will be sourcing the correct biscuits (yes, biscuits in this case means ‘cookies’ and not the soft billowy scone-like things you eat for breakfast). The traditional English biscuit of choice would be McVities Digestives or Rich Teas – hard, plain, crumbly biscuits which are not too sweet and and a tad salty. They provide a nice contrast to the rest of the cake which is so sweet and rich. I can find McVities biscuits in the British food section at Metropolitan Market in Seattle and all the online British food stores also carry them, so they are available in the US if you look. The nearest American equivalent is the Graham cracker but they’re not quite the same. You could also experiment with some of the plain French cookies which are quite easily available (LU do good ones) or use a plain packet shortbread. Remember, nothing too rich, too sweet, or too fancy.

Golden syrup may also be a challenge for people outside the US. I discuss it at length here. Honey, maple syrup or corn syrup could be substituted at a pinch though your cake will taste different. Or else replace the cream and golden syrup with 14 fl oz (400 ml) of sweetened condensed milk.

Finally dried sour cherries are an inspired addition by moi, if I say so myself. The sour, chewy sweetness adds a whole new dimension to the soft cream unctuousness of the chocolate and the crunchiness of the biscuits. I would imagine that dried cranberries would have a similar effect, and raisins would do at a pinch.

Ingredients

Cake

1 sleeve (about 8-10 oz) McVities Rich Tea or Digestive biscuits, Graham crackers, or similar. I used Digestives.

10oz (300g) good chocolate. I used Green & Blacks, two bars of dark and two bars of milk since I had the Minx in mind. More sophisticated chocolate lovers may prefer to use all dark chocolate.

1/2 cup/200g/4oz butter

10 fl oz/300 ml heavy/double cream

4 fl oz / 100 ml/ 4 tbsp golden syrup (see above)

A couple of large handfuls of dried sour cherries/cranberries/raisins (optional)

Topping

4 oz (100g) good chocolate (see above)

1 tbsp heavy/double cream

Method

Line a loaf tin with butter and parchment paper

Crumble the cookies into small roughly almond-sized bits.

Set up a bain marie or a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, break up the chocolate into bits and melt it in the bowl, together with the butter, cream and syrup.

When everything is fully melted together, stir in the crumbled biscuits and dried fruit if using until everything is fully coated with chocolate. Pour it into the loaf tin and smooth the top with a wooden spoon. Chill in the fridge for around 4 hours.

When the cake is fully chilled, melt the remaining chocolate and 1tbsp of cream or milk together to make a ganache. Turn out the cake and spread the ganache over the top and sides, filling in an gaps, lumps an bumps.

Serve in small pieces. A little truly does go a long way, though the Minx (who ADORED this cake) might not fully agree.

Here’s a picture of the cake served at the Royal Wedding at Prince William’s request and made by McVities. They apparently used 35lbs of chocolate and approximately 1,700 Rich Tea biscuits.

Royal Wedding Random Thoughts – The Cake

April 29, 2011 By Paola 4 Comments

I’m super tired and still childishly excited – the family had a ton of fun watching the festivities in bed last night – but I’ll be posting up a few random thoughts throughout the day today. All in all I thought the whole thing was a stunning success, made me proud to be British and more homesick than I can possibly describe. It’s London I miss, God love that huge, dirty, smelly, GLORIOUS city.

I’ll get to the dress later on, but first up I wanted to share some pictures of the cake – one of the most stunning examples of the cakemaker’s art I’ve ever seen.

Just look at that exquisite craftsmanship and incredible attention to detail. I have no idea how they could bear to cut into it.

“The wedding cake, designed by Fiona Cairns, is made from 17 individual fruit cakes (12 of which form the base) and has eight tiers. The cake has been decorated with cream and white icing using the Joseph Lambeth technique. There are up to 900 individually iced flowers and leaves of 17 different varieties decorated on the cake. A garland design around the middle of the cake matches the architectural garlands decorated around the top of the Picture Gallery in Buckingham Palace, the room in which the cake will be displayed.”

And yes, it was a fruit cake which can, contrary to most American opinion it seems, be utterly delicious.

They’re Getting Married in the Morning

April 29, 2011 By Paola 2 Comments

On the night of Charles and Diana’s wedding I had gone with a bunch of teenage friends to see the fireworks in Hyde Park. It was a warm July night and London was en fete.

I’d promised my mother faithfully that we’d get the last bus back, but after the fireworks were over and we’d squashed through the gates of the park with thousands of other people, it became obvious that there was no hope of making it home. I remember having to queue for ages outside an old-fashioned red phone box to give her the news that no, I wouldn’t be coming home, and yes, we’d be spending the night out on the street.

We found a space with a pretty good view on the Strand near St Clement Danes (the Oranges and Lemons church) and sat down on the pavement to wait out the night. My overriding memory is of how happy and good- humoured people were – everyone, even the police officers, laughing and joking, cheering every little incident, letting small kids get to the front, sharing food with people (ie. us) who had brought none.

What we saw was nothing like what you see on telly - just the procession trotting past us in one direction and back again the other way. There were no screens and the ceremony itself was relayed over speakers. Diana’s dress was crammed into the carriages and we hardly knew what it was like until we saw it later on TV. And yet it was one of the best nights and days of my life.

I so wanted to be in London for this day, but couldn’t make it work. If you’re there give London a kiss and a hug from me, I’ve been so terribly homesick this week and watching the beginnings of the coverage is making my heart ache.. I’ll be staying up all night watching the coverage in bed with the Minx, wearing pyjamas and my big wedding hat. The Minx has her favourite princess costume and tiara all picked out. There’s champagne, the fixings for a full English breakfast and and Prince William’s favourite chocolate biscuit cake in the fridge and I’ll be Tweeting up a storm, come and find me on @mirrormirrorxx

But it won’t be the same. Sniff.

Royal Wedding Souvenirs – Food

April 13, 2011 By Paola 5 Comments

So I’ve been collecting links like crazy and am going to be boring you silly this week with a veritable parade of Royal Wedding memorabilia. First up is food to get you in the mood for the big day.

UK biscuit (cookie) bakers the Biscuiteers, have come up with a delightful Special Edition tin of biscuits, featuring crowns, glass coaches, tiered wedding cakes, flags, shoes, engagement rings, dresses and cathedrals. I would SO be buying this if I lived in the UK.

Brighton-based cake designers Choccywoccydoodah produced this incredible take on their signature wedding cake to celebrate the event.

Nottingham-based Castle Rock Brewery has created a special beer aptly called Kiss Me Kate for the occasion.

German-based Donkey Products has created a lovely pair of KaTEA and William teabags, showing Kate in her wedding dress wearing an enormous sapphire and wallowing in oodles of cash.

Poor girl has however got some very formidable inlaws to contend with though.

Finally, for those of Stateside who also want wedding cookies then Eleni’s has also created a wedding cookie assortment featuring British icons, tiaras, engagement rings, horses and the bride and groom themselves.

Or instead of commemorative china, you can buy cookies in the shape of commemorative plates, which seems to me to be much the best option. Also available from Eleni’s.

More Royal Wedding stuff later this week.

Recipe of the Week – Scones and Clotted Cream

April 7, 2011 By Paola 3 Comments

I think we’ve talked about his before, but American dairy products are different. Butter is less rich, and the creams have less fat content and, to my great chagrin, thick spoonable, dollop-able creams (I adore the word ‘dollop’) just don’t exist. And nor does clotted cream.

This thick spreadable 55% fat cream is even quite difficult to find in London – it’s a speciality of England’s West Country, and should ideally be consumed in a little teashop somewhere in either Devon or Cornwall at a table heaving with flimsy bits of chintzy china and mismatching embroidered napkins.

I haven’t been able to track it down at all in the US, but last month on our trip to Vancouver, I was thrilled to see it offered as part of the afternoon tea at the Shangri-La, and even more thrilled to be given some as a gift by Stéphane, the world’s loveliest concierge. This month, the wonderful Viv made a return trip to the Shangri-La and came back bearing more clotted cream from Stéphane. Truly I am lucky in my friends.

Clotted cream should be eaten with freshly made, billowy soft, barely sweet scones. It’s taken me a long time to track down a decent scone recipe but this one from the BBC website is really good. It uses buttermilk, which is slightly unusual, but gives the scones a delightful airiness and slight bite.

Ingredients

225g (1 2/3 cups) self-raising flour (if you can’t get self raising make your own by adding 1tsp of baking powder to 1 cup of flour).

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda/baking soda

1 pinch of salt

50g (3.5 tbsp) chilled butter

25g (1tbsp) caster or baker’s sugar

2 handfuls sultanas (golden raisins) optional

125ml (1/2 cup) buttermilk

4 tbsps milk

A little extra flour for rolling and dusting

Preheat the oven to 220C/450F/Gas Mark 7. Butter a baking sheet.

Take a big mixing bowl and add the flour, baking soda, salt and butter. Chop at the butter roughly with kitchen scissors or a knife, and then rub it into the flour. Aim for a reasonably fine crumb but don’t rub it in too much or the scones will be dry. Remember to lift your hands high in the air while you’re doing this to aerate the mixture.

Stir in the sugar. I added two handfuls of golden raisins (sultanas) at this stage. They’re entirely optional or else you could also use normal raisins or currants. Don’t use too many or you’ll weigh the mixture down.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mix and pour in nearly all of the buttermilk and milk. Stir the mix with a spatula until the milk is absorbed and then bring it all together with your hands. The dough should be very soft, almost sticky. Use the last remaining buttermilk and milk to bring together all the flaky bits at the bottom of the bowl if necessary. Use a light touch at this stage.

Dump the dough on a lightly floured work service. Knead just enough to get rid of any cracks and then pat it down gently until it’s a least an inch (2.5cm) thick. Take a round cutter – the size is up to you, I tend to make mini ones, and cut out your scones. The cutter makes a delightful sighing sound as it pushes through the dough. Gather up the trimmings, pat together again and cut again until all your dough is used up. You should have enough for around 5-6 large scones or 10 mini ones.

Here are my little honey bunches excitedly waiting to go into the oven.

Dust with flour and bake in the oven for around 10-12 minutes until risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Serve as soon after baking as possible with jam and a generous dollop of clotted cream. Strawberry jam is traditional but I used the very last of last year’s cherry jam from our tree and they were incredibly delicious

I always serve mine the Cornish way with the cream on top. Apparently Devonians put the cream first and then the jam. This is supposedly the subject of much fierce debate in the West Country.

My awesome red spotty teapot is from Rosanna Inc (which I didn’t know was a Seattle-based company) via discount site RueLala. If you still haven’t signed up for lots of lovely bargains, here’s an invitation.

They Draw And Cook

April 2, 2011 By Paola 1 Comment

As you know, I aspire – with varying degrees of success – to do a little food photography. To my mind recipes just aren’t complete without pictures.

On They Draw And Cook Nate Padavick and Salli Swindell. a brother and sister team, together with sundry other wonderfully talented artists, have put together the web’s biggest collection of illustrated recipes. Aren’t these exquisite? Looks like there are some great recipes too.

Photography suddenly seems very passé.

{via Helen at Countryside Wedding}

Royal Wedding Watch – Afternoon Tea at Harvey Nicks

March 30, 2011 By Paola 10 Comments

I can’t tell you how much I want this silly but charming Limited Edition Royal Wedding Mug, which has been specially produced for upmarket British department store Harvey Nichols (oh how I miss Harvey Nicks).

Tragically, it seems that this mug is only available from Harvey Nicks’ Food Halls directly, on sale for £20, or will be given away as part of an exclusive afternoon tea being served at Harvey Nichols’ cafés and brasseries throughout the month of April.

I’ll be emailing Harvey Nicks to see if it’s going to be made available online, so that people in the US and beyond, including me dammit, can get their sticky mitts on one. If you’re in the US and think there might be demand for it, can you let me know in the comments below and I’ll send Harvey Nicks a link to this post.

Recipe of the Week – Pear and Almond Tart

March 14, 2011 By Paola 5 Comments

The clocks may have gone forward this weekend but if my organic veggie box is anything to go by, we’re still in the depths of winter here in the Pacific Northwest. Fortunately, in among the kale and spinach and chard and collard greens, there are usually a few delicious pears to be found, so I’ve been making a lot of my very favourite Pear & Almond Tart from the River Café Cook Book.

The River Café is one of London’s most celebrated (and much missed by me) Italian restaurants and the eponymous cookbooks I have by chefs Ruth Rogers and the late much lamented Rose Gray are among the most dog-eared and stained in my vast collection.

The emphasis on fresh seasonal ingredients rather than fancy cooking techniques means that most of the recipes are highly accessible to the home cook, especially if you’re prepared to fiddle with the quantities, as most recipes are restaurant-sized.

Pear & Almond Tart

Ingredients*

FOR THE SWEET PASTRY

175g/6oz/1.5 cups plain (all-purpose) flour

A pinch of salt

90g/4oz/ 1 stick unsalted butter, cold from the fridge and cubed

50g/2oz/0.5 cups icing (powdered) sugar

1 whole egg

*I have halved the quantities given in the book to make a smaller tart, plenty big enough for 6-8 servings. If you wish, double the quantities and use a 30cm (12 inch) loose-bottomed flan tin to make enough for at least 12 greedy people.

Whizz up the flour, salt, butter and sugar in a food processor until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the egg and whizz again. The mixture will immediately combine and leave the sides of the bowl. Remove the dough, pat it into a ball, wrap with cling film (Saran wrap) and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

When it’s firm and chilled, grate the pastry into a 9in (23cm) fluted loose-bottomed fluted flan tin and then press it evenly round the sides and bottom. (I have no idea why you need to grate it rather than just press it in in lumps, but I always follow blindly follow instructions). It’s fine to handle this pastry as much as you want.

Line the pastry case with greaseproof or parchment paper and fill with baking beans. Bake blind at 180 degrees C/ 350 degrees F/ Gas Mark 4 until light golden brown, about 25 minutes. I forgot to line with paper for this session which accounts for the curious pitted nature of the pastry case above.

FOR THE FRANGIPANE FILLING

3 beautifully ripe pears

175g/6oz/1.5 sticks butter

175g/6oz/0.75 cups caster (baker’s) sugar

175g/6oz/1 cup ground almonds (almond meal)

1 egg + 1 egg yolk

Cut your pears into large chunks and lay on the pastry shell. You could also halve or quarter the pears lengthwise and fan them out in wheel. Some people poach the pears in syrup, but if you have fragrant, juicy ripe pears then you don’t need to bother. And if you don’t, go make something else.

Cream the butter and sugar until the mixture is pale and light. Add the almonds and eggs. Spoon the frangipane over the pears and spread so that the pears are covered and the case is filled to the edges.

Bake at 150 degrees C/300 degrees F/ Gas Mark 3 until golden brown and firm to the touch. The recipe says this should take 40 minutes, but it always takes over an hour in my oven.

Serve on its own or with a little crème fraiche and refuse resolutely to consider how much butter you’re consuming. Pears and almonds are health foods, right?

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