August 15, 2010

SUNSHINE contest II winners

 

Ajlr writes: 

After a truly amazing outpouring of culinary talent and ideas over this last week, the winners – yes, two winners* -  of a signed copy of the new and beautiful golden edition of SUNSHINE is cgbookcat1 for Chocolate Basilisk Balls with Kiss of Life sauce and  DrRo for Berry Crumble Butter Cake.  I can imagine happily eating the products from any cafe run by either of these forum members.**

If the winner(s) will PM me on the forum – soon*** – with the details of where their copy should be posted to, then all will be arranged. Many congratulations to both of them.

Now, where’s my mixing bowl…

Meanwhile . . . I was just explaining in a footnote† that one winner wasn’t enough.  Well, clearly two isn’t either.   So just as this contest is an addendum to the previous one, we are going to have an Addendum to the Addendum, to wit, a third winner of a signed shiny gold SUNSHINE is going to be chosen by popular vote, out of the recipes already posted for this contest.

            I, of course, who can just about call up a new game of Fingerzilla††, have no idea how to run a vote on the blog.  But ajlr seems to think it can be done.  Since I kind of sprang the idea on her about twenty minutes ago she and her fellow mods haven’t quite worked out the details yet.  But they will.  And then I’ll post them here.  So to get yourselves in the mood, here are our first two winners’ recipes.  Then you can go cruise the Playing With Your Food SUNSHINE contest thread and think hard about who you will vote for.  It will not be an easy choice.  And when you go to bed tonight visions of sugar-plums (and chocolate) will dance in your head.  Mmmmmm.

cgbookcat1 

For the previous contest I said I would make “Chocolate Basilisk Balls with Kiss of Life sauce,” so I figured I’d better invent the recipe. These were inspired by the Indian dessert Gulab Jamun, although they are really nothing alike except that both feature spheres in sauces. The Basilisk Balls (basilisk eyes) are dark chocolate truffles, and the Kiss of Life sauce is a Cardamom Creme Anglaise. The truffle recipe is modified from Cooking for Engineers, and the sauce is modified from Epicurious.

The goal is to petrify the guests at the first bite, and slowly bring them back to life with murmurs of intense appreciation.

for the Basilisk Balls,

ingredients:
1 pound dark chocolate, cut into small pieces (not unsweetened — Ghirardelli dark chips are good)
1 cup heavy cream
about 3 Tbsp of a really good cognac (I used Hennessy)
unsweetened cocoa powder to coat

directions:
Heat cream in a saucepan until just boiling. Remove from heat and stir in the chocolate and cognac until your ganache mixture is shiny and smooth. Refrigerate until stiff.

Scoop truffles into small balls using a melon baller or tablespoon measure, and roll until smooth with your hands (this is a messy process). Place in refrigerator to harden for a few minutes. When solid, lightly coat with cocoa powder.* Eat a truffle to check quality control at this point.†††

for the Kiss of Life Sauce,

ingredients:
4 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup sugar, divided into halves
scrapings from 1/2 vanilla bean
1 tsp crushed cardamom seeds

directions:
Lightly whisk egg yolks and half of the sugar in a small bowl and set aside. In a saucepan, combine the cream, milk, vanilla, cardamom, and the rest of the sugar and heat on medium until almost boiling. You should stir almost constantly (and scrape the bottom of the saucepan) for the duration of the heating process. When the cream mixture is hot, reduce heat dramatically and slowly pour the egg mixture into the cream, stirring as you do so. Increase heat again to medium and stir until the mixture becomes a custard. You will know this has occurred when you can run your finger across the back of the spoon and the track will remain. The mixture will also look very slightly grainy. Remove from heat, cool, and put through a fine strainer to remove unwanted bits of egg.

To serve, place two basilisk balls on a small plate and cover with sauce to taste. The sauce also makes an excellent ice cream if there is any left over.

* The cocoa powder will make the sauce run down the sides of the truffle without properly sticking. This can be solved in two ways — leave off the coating and use just the ganache, or keep adding sauce until it looks right. I prefer the second method, because you get to eat more chocolate that way. ‡

DrRo 

Ok, I admit I just joined so that I could enter the competition‡‡… plus Robin said something about needing more forum members who bake [smiley omitted because Wordpress turns them into squiggles] ‡‡‡  Plus I’m rereading Sunshine, AGAIN… and it always makes me want to bake things.

This is an entirely original recipe in that the cake base probably originated from a golden Wattle cook book sometime in the 195/60s… my mum baked a lot of cakes (6 kids can eat a cake like locusts on a pea plant – gone in seconds) so I learnt it from her – using wooden spoon measurements – as in, 2 spoonfuls of butter! I’m trying to convert back to real weights. The rest came from one of those happy accidents of wanting to use something up and not knowing what to do.

Berry Crumble Butter Cake

Heat oven to 180 deg (C)

185g butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups self raising flour
~1/4 cup of milk

Berry mixture
Any combination of ~ 3cups of stewed berries. It works really well with stewed apricots or apples as well. The key to this is that the majority of the liquid is removed. Do this by sitting in a fine-ish sieve for several hours, or by sitting a heavy ladle in the mixture, and spooning out the fluid as it fills. The final mixture should be almost thick enough hold its shape when a spoon is drawn through the middle.

Crumble mix

2 eggs
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 cups dessicated coconut

Method:

Cream eggs and sugar, beat in eggs, then flour and finally mix in milk. Should be a nice smooth creamy batter consistency. Put mixture into a buttered and papered 23cm round tin (or about a 20 cm square one). Top with berry mixture.

Mix together crumble ingredients and strew over cake.

Bake for 1 to 1.5 hrs, until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. If the topping starts to over-brown, cover with alfoil

Yum! 

* * *

* Yes.  Well.  There were so many amazing recipes, one winner hardly seemed enough.  Is clearly not enough.  And then Ajlr had the bright idea that since the Basilisk Balls do not, in fact, involve any baking^, maybe there should be a second drawing for something that involves baking.  I’m not sure what we would have done if the second recipe didn’t have any baking in it either.  Kept drawing possibly.  Fortunately the second one did include some actual oven time.

            But, speaking of extra winners . . . well, keep reading.

 ^ Although they are clearly something Sunshine would be all for.  Maybe in the Sequel That Does Not Exist Paulie starts making truffles as a manifestation of his individuality.  In which case he would certainly make not only these but also Magpie’s Cloud 9 white chocolate truffles. 

** Okay, guys, I want to hear that you’re together at the negotiating table having a meaningful dialogue.  Or the start-up counter at the bank.^ 

^ Don’t bother me with geography.  Geography is boring.+ 

+ Except on Google Earth. 

*** Let me put it this way:  Fiona^ comes on Tuesday.  If the books don’t go out Tuesday . . . gods know when they’ll go out. 

               PS:  When you PM ajlr, be sure to include if you want them signed to anyone, or just my generic scrawl.

 ^ Fiona, who is not afraid of the post office and, furthermore, has not desired to murder any of our local postpersons this week.+ 

+ I say nothing about her attitude toward her own local postpersons. 

† You do read the footnotes as they happen, right?  You don’t just read them all in a lump at the end of the post and then have no idea what they refer to? 

†† I have just bought an upgrade.  Yes, to Fingerzilla.  Six more levels.  More stuff to blow up.  Stay tuned. 

††† Absolutely.  Eat it slowly and thoughtfully, right?  I can do this.

‡  Good attitude.  Excellent attitude.   An attitude that manifests the true spirit of this blog. 

‡‡ Yaay!

‡‡‡ Yaaaaay! 

August 15, 2010 | Filed Under contests, food | Leave a Comment 

Guest post (mostly) by Jeanne Marie

 

My First Fruitcakes 

B-Twin’s post on her luscious wedding fruitcakes, and some of the subsequent forum remarks on wedding cakes* in particular and fruitcakes in general, took me back to my first year living in Memphis, Tennessee.  It was my first year living on my own post-college, and I was big into fancy experimental cooking.  In that vein, I decided around August that I wanted to make some fancy brandied fruitcakes for the coming Christmas.** 

I looked up a few recipes for fruitcakes, and found several options.  I particularly wanted one that needed to soak in liquor and “age,” and at last decided on one that I thought would be a good choice.  But, I was not a fan of lots of candied fruits, so I decided to sub out ALL the candied fruits the recipe included for simple dried fruits.  I made twelve mini-loaf cakes, which baked up like little bricks.  I wasn’t worried, though, the recipe had warned that they’d bake up very hard, but would moisten up over a few months with some brandy.  I followed the recipe specifications, wrapping them in cloth and then pouring on “some” brandy (I think the recipe called for a few tablespoons, but I was feeling generous), and left them in the bottom of my fridge in ziploc bags.  I checked them periodically, and usually when I checked them, I’d add more brandy.  Over the months between August baking and Christmas, I added an entire fifth of brandy to those twelve mini-loaves!*** 

Finally, the first of many Christmas parties arrived – the faculty afternoon luncheon party for the elementary school where I was working as the music teacher!  I took two of the loaves with me.  At the time, I noticed that they were rather redolent of brandy, but mentally shrugged, and figured that they were supposed to be that way.  When the time for the Christmas luncheon arrived, I ate a smallish piece of my fruitcake and was OVERWHLEMED by just how potent my little fruitcakes were!  YIKES, I started worrying about breathing too close to the festive candles on the table!  I myself was only able to handle a very small piece – I’m a bit of a light-weight in terms of liquor capacity – but, two other teachers in particular, a second grade teacher and a fifth grade teacher, were VERY happy that I had brought the “brandycakes”… and, they were even happier after dividing the cakes between them!!  Both were decidedly flushed and wobbly when they headed back to their respective classrooms!! 

I’ve wondered – if I had stuck with the candied fruit, would the cakes have been quite so potent?  Did the dried fruit simply suck up way more brandy than candied fruit would have?  Or, did I just overkill on adding way more brandy than any poor fruitcake needed?  I’ve never tried to experiment with fruitcakes again, but at least those two teachers remember me fondly…if they remember that luncheon at all, that is!! 

* * *

 *HOLY CATS, I’m gonna NEED one of those!! gulp ^

^ Yes you are

 **::cue ominous music:: 

***you see it coming, don’t you… 

* * *

The hellgoddess continues: 

Since Jeanne Marie has been so CARELESS as to lose this legendary fruitcake recipe and since of course reading about fruitcakes, with this audience, is going to lead to a lot of jonesing for fruitcakes†, I thought I’d offer one of mine.  I seem to have quite a few.  We had this conversation on the forum—most of us don’t like the candied-fruit-stuck-together-with-superglue style of fruitcake, but quite a few of us like the dried-fruit, brown-sugar-and-spices kind.  I will spare you the defense of good candied fruit—the problem with maraschino cherries isn’t the maraschino, it’s the red food dye—and go (almost) straight to a dried-fruits-with booze recipe.  I may post some of the others at a later date.††  The only way I like bourbon is in a pecan cake, for example.†††

            And with reference to the conversation on the forum about fruitcakes for weddings, with several Americans saying they’ve never heard of such a thing and me saying er um, I’d have said at least half the American weddings I’ve attended had fruitcake under the white enamel and the plastic figures . . . my FANNY FARMER (copyright 1965) contains a ‘wedding fruitcake’ which is described as ‘the traditional dark rich fruit cake’, and even the alternative sponge cake (‘Bride’s cake’) is assumed to have a fruitcake top layer.  Furthermore in my eternal quest to waste more time dorking around on the internet, I discover that good old bartleby.com has the 1918 FF on line and their ‘cake’ section is loaded with fruitcakes including not one but two ‘wedding cakes’ which are in fact fruitcakes.  http://www.bartleby.com/87/0031.html (the wedding cakes are almost last, and don’t bother with the ‘search’, which is a baleful fraud and will keep trying to dump you in amazon).

            Meanwhile. 

            I had been experimenting with mini fruitcakes for years before Judy Rosenberg’s Rosie’s Chocolate Packed Jam Filled Butter Rich No Holds Barred Cookie Book came out‡.  I’ve got two sets of mini bread pans, half size and quarter size, and two or three little loaves of different varieties, wrapped up with different coloured ribbons around each of them, makes a very nice present for a whole lot less effort than making millions of frelling cookies.‡‡  Rosie took it a step farther and made her mini fruitcakes in muffin tins, which is also pretty brilliant, and that hadn’t occurred to me.

            It was even more annoying when her recipe turned out to be a lot like mine—it amazes me how many drunken fruitcake recipes don’t tell you to soak your fruit in the booze first for example.  She however dilutes hers with water.  Bleh—and she likes pecans and almonds.  The following recipe is enough like her mini fruitcakes you might think I started there but I didn’t.  Great minds think alike in this case.

 2 c assorted dried fruit (black and golden raisins, cranberries, blueberries, apricots, cherries, dates, whatever).  The big stuff you want to chop to be about raisin/berry sized.

1 c chopped nuts:  almonds, pecans and/or hazelnuts

1 c rum or brandy

1 c white all-purpose flour

½ c wholemeal/wholewheat/spelt flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp allspice

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp mace

12 T (1 ½ c) lightly salted soft butter

1 c dark brown sugar

1 tsp (GOOD QUALITY) vanilla extract or ½ tsp orange essence (NOT ‘flavouring’)

1 T grated lemon or orange zest (if you’re using orange essence, I usually use more zest too)

2 large eggs at room temperature

 

Put the dried fruit in a shallow bowl and pour the rum or brandy over them. Put a plate over the bowl and leave for at least 48 hours and up to about a week.  If your bowl isn’t shallow enough that all the fruit is in contact with the booze, stir occasionally.  

Preheat oven to 350°F, and grease well your two-loaves-of-bread equivalent pans:  so four half-sized loaf tins, eight quarter-sized loaf tins, or approximately 24 muffin cups.  (If you’re using muffin cups . . . use paper liners.  Life is short.) 

Sift the dry stuff together. 

Cream butter and sugar thoroughly.  Add zest and vanilla or essence, and cream again.  Add eggs.  BEAT THOROUGHLY.  Drain the fruit and add any liquid (not the fruit yet!), if there is any, to the batter.  Mix.  

Add the flour mixture.  Stir in well.  Now add the fruit and nuts.  Stir again.  This is the moment you may have to use your judgement.  Flour varies, as does how much liquid there is left after the fruit has been soaking in it.  You may need to add a little liquid–orange juice, apple juice or water–or a little flour.   

Pour into your pans:  depending on the size of the pan your baking time is anywhere from about 20-25 minutes (muffin tins) to about an hour and a quarter (9 x 5 inch normal bread pans).   When the middles puff up and start looking solid, stick a toothpick in.  When the toothpick comes out dry, etc. 

Let cool in the pans half an hour or so.  An hour won’t hurt.  But don’t try to get them out too soon, they’ll be too fragile.  (They would be less fragile if you used less butter.  But . . . why would you want to use less butter?) 

These don’t need to ripen, although you can turn them into little leglessness bombs if you want to (in theory the baking will have removed all the alcohol) by wrapping them in cheesecloth and dripping a little further rum on them—in which case keep them wrapped up in plastic or tin foil in your refrigerator, like Jeanne Marie did with hers, till wanted.  I did this once and . . . wheeeeee.  Don’t use an entire fifth, okay?  (They’ll probably fall apart if you do, and then you’ll have leglessness bomb pudding.)

And I feel that, when it’s time to eat it, the true perfect drunken fruitcake should also have frosting.  Frosting that goes something like:  1 c confectioner’s/icing sugar, 2T butter, cream together till smooth, and then add enough rum/brandy (2-3 T) to make it spreadable.  Go for it. 

* * *

 † B_twin has promised a fruitcake recipe, but at the moment she’s deep in the Australian bush somewhere—with no internet connection—becoming further educated in some arcane Australian-bush skill, so she cannot be applied to in this extremity. 

†† I keep meaning to post more recipes like I keep meaning to post some favourite poems (other people’s poems) and I was going to start posting book reports/reviews again this year and it’s the middle of February already and . . . 

††† If I’m going to get seriously wasted in some manner that does not involve champagne, it’s going to be single malt Scotch, probably Laphroaig.  

‡ Which is the follow up to Rosie’s All Butter Fresh Cream Sugar Packed No Holds Barred Baking Book.  If there’s a third one, I don’t want to know.  

‡‡ She says feelingly.  But I’ve made millions and millions of frelling cookies too.  Home made food is the answer when you have too many friends and no money.

February 14, 2010 | Filed Under food, guest blog, wow | Comments Off 

Frelling ratbag

 

It has been an absolute frelling ratbag sod of a day.   A lot of the most emotionally oppressive garbage is inherently unbloggable.*  But I’ll tell you I’ve had a second friend in I think two months diagnosed with cancer;   they got the news for sure yesterday, it’s just a question of how bad it is and what they do next.    Friend number one has come through surgery with flying colours but . . . who needs to have cancer, you know?   There are so many better things to be doing with your time. 

            And Daisy and Roy are giving up on Mike:  long phonecalls from both of them today.  And I’ve said I’ll find a new home for him.  Yes, I am nuts.  And your point would be—?  I look at my hellhounds—four little shiny eyes immediately staring back at me, hoping I will make an Interesting Gesture:  a toy?  Another piece of chicken?**  A move toward the sofa, a picking-up of the TV remote?  A step toward the door?***–If you’re a critter person, how can you live without your critters?†  But I want to say something utterly naive and puerile here about how can you love a critter and not put in the basic time to train it, if it’s the kind that needs training?††  It doesn’t have to be top in its agility class or able to do canter pirouettes, but it has to know its place and what’s expected of it.  And basic companion-animal training just isn’t that hard.  You just have to do it.  And there’s nothing wrong with Mike but its lack.

            Moan moan moan moan moan.  But I’m pretty depressed.  Oh yes, and Pegasus the Cow has just taken another dive into the ravine†††, although that may be a result of all the other stuff that’s going on.  MOAN.

 

Comfort food.  I need comfort food.  

This is my variation on a recipe from one of my favourite cookbooks, whose name and notoriety have been seen on these virtual pages before:  All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No Holds Barred Baking Book by Judy Rosenberg.  The title says it all.

 Lemon Raisin Pie 

1 pie crust bottom:  there is no top crust to this pie.‡  Having said that, I recommend you make it in a deep pan and build the edge up a bit, so you may need more than a half-recipe of a two-crust pie.  Half-bake it:  about 10 minutes at 400°F, just till it’s beginning to show faint colour.  Cool.

1 ½ c golden raisins, or mixture of any kind of raisins you happen to have on hand.  All golden is very pretty, and probably looks most like you thought ahead and got your ingredients organised, but I rather like the speckled effect of golden with ordinary black, and maybe a few currants thrown in for make weight.  I’ve also made this with part cranberries, but I’m a big cranberry fan.‡‡  The clever boys and girls of the food industry have figured out a way to dry cranberries so they’re sweeter than fresh ones, but you may still need to adjust your sugar.

1 T grated lemon zest (I don’t have to remind you not to grate the white, do I?)

½ c lemon juice

¾ c chopped almonds or hazelnuts or a mixture.  I suggest you toast them first too.

1 stick lightly salted butter at room temp

½ c granulated sugar

¼ c dark brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

3 large eggs at room temp

 Preheat oven to 350°F

Soak raisins and lemon zest in the lemon juice for at least 15 minutes.  If you’re going to make the pie this afternoon, you could put them in in the morning.  Add the nuts at the last minute, just as you’re putting the rest of the pie together.

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.  It’s easier if you use an electric mixer.  Throw the cinnamon in at some point.  Add the eggs one at a time—remember to scrape the sides of the bowl a lot—mixing thoroughly but no more than that.  Mixture will look curdled.

Stir in the raisin mixture and pour into the crust.‡‡‡

Bake 40-45 minutes.  The centre should be just set, but it’ll be paler than the edges.  It’ll still be soft though.  It’ll set better as it cools.  Let cool THOROUGHLY before you try to cut it.

Warning:  this is seriously rich. 

* * *

* Insert standard rant here about the gob-smackingly indiscreet things people have been known to put in their blogs and then they get all upset when the people they’ve been writing about get upset.  Can you say ‘clueless clodpole’?  You can choose some other phrase of opprobrium as suits you, but I like the euphony, even if no one has said ‘clodpole’ since Mark Twain. 

** I have fallen into the reprehensible habit of giving them a bit of neat chicken each after supper, supposing they eat supper.  This is in theory to inspire them to eat more supper . . . I doubt it does anything of the kind, but they’re bright enough to have figured out that they don’t get the chicken if they haven’t (nearly) finished their proper food, with all that lumpy brown kibble stuff.  I think what it does is give me, for about five seconds about three nights out of four, the illusion of having real dogs, you know, the kind that think food is terrific, the kind you can clicker-train because they respond to treats.  It does my little heart good to see them surge out of the dog bed and slap their butts to the floor to get their scraps of chicken.  And no, since chicken is the only thing that makes them eat at all, I am not going to push it by trying to use it as a training treat.

            Sigh.

 *** It’s the middle of the night.  It’s dark out there.  We are not going for another hurtle.^ 

^ We might run into something.  Trees.  Telephone poles.  Vampires. 

† Dogs, cats, horses, giraffes, poison dart frogs, whatever 

†† I think poison dart frogs generally just hang out in their terrariums.  

††† Speaking of basic training for your critters.  Novels are feral. 

‡ Can’t remember if I’ve posted my pie crust recipe.  One of these days I’ll go check. 

‡‡ I’m from Maine.  I didn’t need any frelling British cooking maven to tell me about cranberries. 

‡‡‡ I always start my pies off with tin foil around the crimped edge, to prevent it browning too soon and being wrecked by the time the filling is cooked through.  Take it off, if you use it, about halfway through.

July 23, 2009 | Filed Under critters, food | Comments Off 

Lemon flavoured wreckage

 

I am so shattered I didn’t go bell ringing tonight.  It’s the once-a-month practice at Old Eden and since I’m one of the founding members of making that practise happen I get extra black marks when I don’t show up.  But the absolute deciding factor is that Chaos has the runs.  Lovely.  Great.  Charming.  Delightful.  Having dogs is so fulfilling.*  Especially as I discovered Chaos’ condition when he brought all three of us to an abrupt, shoulder-damaging halt and Assumed the Position . . . immediately outside someone’s door.  And you can’t pick it up. . . .

            So.  Let’s get back to shattered.  I want to give you a recipe here in a minute and the above is not a good lead in.  I’m shattered because I’ve been grinding away at PEGASUS, which is an excellent thing, but that I’m this blind and stupid this early in the third draft is not such a good thing.

            However, on the ever-absorbing topic of creating compelling heroines, several people, for some reason, sent me the following links

 http://wondermark.com/520/

 http://wondermark.com/521/ 

There now.  That should have given you an appetite.

 

I spent most of–last week, was it?  When it was so hot?–saying to myself, I must get my ice-cream maker out.  Saturday it turned cold.  Today, wearing a woolly jumper and my sheepskin slippers, I got my ice-cream maker out.  June!  It’s June!

 

Lemon ice 

4-6 lemons, unwaxed and organic

1 c sugar

 

Optional:  strawberries

More sugar

 

Wash the lemons.  Then cut the zest off approximately two of them–depending on how big they are and what shape their skins are in.  But if you can’t get at least unwaxed lemons and preferably organic, I wouldn’t bother with the zest:  you really don’t want to eat fungicidal wax and merely washing ‘em doesn’t really get the nasty stuff off.**   If you can’t get organic and are going zest-free, add about a quarter teaspoon of lemon essence to your sugar syrup. 

            If you are cutting your zest off . . . after dutifully using a grater for several years*** I discovered by accident that a small sharp knife is actually better because you can follow the curve of your lemon:  I find it’s almost impossible not to get some of the bitter white pith mixed up in the works with a grater.  And you don’t have to do it beautifully here:  you’re going to strain it later anyway.

            Dump the sugar, the zest, and 2c water in a saucepan and heat slowly till the sugar dissolves.  Keep the heat low enough so you don’t have to stand there stirring constantly to prevent the sugar burning.  Stir occasionally.  Simmer a while, say 5-15 minutes.  Take it off the heat, let cool, and put it in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight.  Leave your lemons out to stay at room temperature.  There’s nothing crankier than a cold lemon, and you want the juice.

            After your lemon syrup has been seething long enough, squeeze your nice warm cooperative lemons.  You want ½ c juice.  Strain the lemon juice.  Strain the syrup to get rid of the zest and add the lemon juice.  Stir a few times.  Start your ice-cream machine and do whatever you have to do to make ice cream.

            I rebelled long ago at the idea that you’re supposed to puree all the fruit you put in ice cream.  You do have to decide how you feel about the texture of frozen fruit and how big you want your chunks to be.  I chop my strawberries relatively small and lavish more sugar over them and let them seethe while the ice cream gets made.  Then at more or less the last minute of the ice-cream-making process you can dump your strawberries and their by-now-heavily-strawberry-infused sugar syrup in the ice cream maker and let it run just enough longer to mix the strawberries in.  This may vary with your ice-cream maker but if you stand over it and turn it off at the perfect moment you can get this excellent marbled effect (if your reflexes are good enough and you like living dangerously, you can assist with a spoon while the machine is still running), and the strawberry ribbons will be slightly crunchy with undissolved sugar.  I like this result, but you may not.  Strawberries merely politely scattered over your lemon ice lying in its dish is also good, but unless your strawberries are at the absolute perfect pinnacle of ripeness I recommend you sugar them one way or another, or the collision of acids with the intense lemonyness of the ice will not be agreeable.  (You can also make strawberry sauce.  I’ll post a recipe some day.)

            The lemon ice on its own is also very pleasing, but it is strawberry season. 

* * *

 * I was up at Third House yesterday, planting dahlias.  I was, specifically, planting dahlias in a little patch of empty ground which I had, a few weeks ago–wait a minute, you may have been there, I blogged about it–stuck all over with broken twigs and a bit of spare wire mesh to attempt to discourage local feline or felines from developing their extensive latrine facilities there any further.  This seems to have been successful.  Then I asked Atlas to dig it through, let it settle for a few days^ and was now planting it up.  There was some rustling and a few small muffled thuds on the very overgrown bit of fence between the main garden and the compost bins.  I looked up and was treated to a very heavy glare from a small tortoiseshell cat, who was clearly saying I’m Queen of the Universe, and what do you think you’re doing?  Come a little closer, honey, I said, and I’ll be throwing you into next week. 

^ AKA didn’t get around to it sooner 

** I am so glad organic unwaxed lemons exist.  When I was first going seriously crunchy granola, which is about a quarter-century ago now, unwaxed organic lemons did not exist, unless you had your own heated conservatory and grew them.  I had a lovely little zester gadget that I THREW AWAY because I assumed I’d never use it again. . . .  

*** Having THROWN MY ZESTER OUT^ 

^ I THREW MY ZESTER OUT sounds like a particularly lurid tell-all memoir.  But then I have a low mind.

June 9, 2009 | Filed Under food | Comments Off 

Immortal Muffins

 

I am ravaged by exhaustion.  Today I have done house painters*, hellhounds, PEGASUS, A New Little Thing for Organ**, gardening, more hellhounds, and handbells.*** 

Meanwhile I am still mourning last weekend’s muffins, so cruelly sacrificed to the welfare of society.†  I’d originally been going to post the recipes I used on the fete Sunday they were eaten.  But then I thought I’d immortalise them here anyway.

 Apple-cornmeal muffins 

1 ¼ c plain flour

2T – ¼ c sugar

1 T baking powder

1 c yellow cornmeal

¾ c apple juice

¼ c bland oil or melted butter

1 beaten egg

1 c peeled chopped apple, something tart and crisp

 Mix dry, mix wet, mix mix.  Add apples last.  Stir just till dry ingredients damp.  Fill 12-15 muffin cups (greased or paper-cup lined) not quite full (they need room to rise).  400°F 20-25 minutes. 

 

Lavinia’s lemon-currant muffins 

2 c plain flour

2 T – ¼ c sugar

1 T baking powder

¼ c melted butter (I don’t myself feel you can get away with oil in this recipe)

¾ c apple juice

1 beaten egg

½ tsp lemon essence#

½ c currants

 Mix dry, mix wet, mix mix.  Fold currants in last.

12 muffins, 400°F 20-25 minutes

# If you can’t find lemon essence, you can mess about with lemon juice and grated rind.  I used to do this, but I’ve forgotten the proportions (I’d start by subbing 2T lemon juice for 2T of the apple juice plus 2 tsp rind.  That’s the cautious end though.  I’d almost certainly decide I wanted more) and didn’t write them down.  Just be sure you use FRESH juice and FRESH rind. 

* * *

 * And if one more nice helpful person tells me that dark colours are claustrophobic I am going to arrange that they have some nice dark blue and purple bruises!  I have already yielded on the subject of the attic, because I think that all the three dimensional crankiness would give me vertigo in a more vivid colour, the little room that used to be the second bedroom till the stairs ate it is going to be covered in bookshelves so it doesn’t matter what colour it is, and I’ve agreed to the hall in neutral boring because I have no idea what I’m going to want to do ultimately, and I still have the sitting-room, the remaining bedroom, and the dining room–all of which open off the hall–to play with.  So for now if I want a cobalt^ bathroom, to go with the fancy tiles, I can have it.  Furthermore, I’m the one with the chequebook, you know? 

^ It’s actually called ‘light cobalt’.   Right.  It’s in the same range as pale emerald and dark white.  What it is is out of a catalogue of ‘heritage colours’ which the painter didn’t want to show me.  No, no, they’re all too intense, he said.   He and his crew, just by the way, are all kitted out in dazzling, one might almost say virulent, white.  

** Music lesson tomorrow 

*** The handbell wedding is now barely a fortnight away.  I’m thinking of joining the French Foreign Legion under an alias.  Can you bring hellhounds?  I feel hellhounds would be an ornament to such a company. 

† I can see the headlines:  Small Hampshire Town Wracked By Intestinal Discord, Traced to Two Dozen Muffins at the Church Fete Teas.  Perpetrator Rumoured to Have Left Town in a French Foreign Legion Direction.

May 21, 2009 | Filed Under food, too much | Comments Off 

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Happiness is good health and a bad memory. -- Ingrid Bergman