Au Revoir!

No cooking, baking or blog posts for a while - it's holiday time! Tomorrow, Hubs and I are off to the Canadian East coast for a tour of the Nova Scotia area followed by a few days in Montreal.

I've left my mother and the Chief Tester in charge of the garden - he waters and she harvests and eats the vegetables. It's the first time we've left the garden at the height of the harvest, and CT is no great vegetable lover!

We return on 6th August. Meanwhile keep an eye on  the blog Deb Cooks; a few days ago Deb interviewed me for her series of interviews with fellow food bloggers, and hopes to publish the results soon!

Chocolate Honey Meringues

With three egg whites to use up after making the Melting Chocolate Puddings, some kind of meringue seemd the answer.

This recipe for Chocolate Honey Meringues was published by Dan Lepard a couple of weeks ago in his Guardian Weekend column. It only needed one more egg white adding!

The recipe was straightforward to follow and I didn't encounter any problems, although I did lower the temperatue by 10C after the first hour as I know my oven is quite hot. The mixture made about 25 meringues using a tablespoon of the raw meringue mix for each one.

The flavour was great - I used a strongly flavoured Greek mountain honey - but unfortunately I just didn't like the texture. They were almost jaw-breakingly hard, and I'm not experienced enough with meringues to know if this was right, or if I did something wrong, such as overbaking or not beating the egg whites enough. I think I will have to freeze these and eventually use them in an Eton Mess type of dessert, where they will have a chance to soften a bit before they are eaten. 

Chocolate Puddings to Celebrate Birthdays and Anniversaries.

This weekend is the nearest weekend to the Chief Tester's birthday, and also the first anniversary of this blog. My own birthday was last weekend. The Chief Tester usually gets something new for his birthday treat, even though he's much nearer to 30 than 3! It was going to be the Chocolate and Hazelnut Plait which I posted previously, but that was hardly successful enough to serve as a birthday  treat.

Hubs and I are off on holiday to Canada mid-week, leaving the Chief Tester to two weeks of ready meals and whatever I leave in the freezer. I usually leave him two batches of brownies  - one ready to eat and  one in smaller portions in the freezer, so that he doesn't have to rely on bought cakes. This meant that for his birthday treat I wanted to cook something that was going to be eaten all at once, with no leftovers to compete with the forthcoming brownies. 

After searching fruitlessly through my recipe books, and online, for something which tempted me to cook it, for some reason molten middle chocolate puddings sprang to mind. I've seen Delia Smith's Melting Chocolate Puddings recipe recommended frequently, so decided to try that. The only other attempt I've ever made on this type of pudding involved a lovely recipe with a lump of ganache in the middle - but I've lost the recipe, and didn't have time to make a ganache, anyway.

I only had 6 pudding basins of the correct size, but fortunately the recipe divided easily, so that I could cook 3/4 of it. The other advantage of this recipe is that the batter can be made well ahead of time and refrigerated, or even frozen until required. So no last minute preparation hassle while you're trying to cook and serve the main course. This time I made the batter mix during the afternoon, refrigerated three puddings for use later in the day and froze three for another time.

I had no problems with the recipe, although you do have to be patient and gentle with folding the chocolate into the mousse-y egg mixture. I cooked for the time specified in the recipe and got a small still-molten centre as a result - I think they could have done with a little less cooking  to give more of a molten middle so I'll try 30-45 seconds less next time! My pudding basins were non-stick, so turned out easily, without needing a knife run round the edge.

The resulting pudding is surprisingly light, but still richly chocolatey. The cake part is really more of a cooked mousse than a sponge, with the batter using so many eggs and so little flour. With the ease of advanced preparation, this could easily be a dinner party dessert, although you might want help with turning out a large number of puddings quickly, to serve while they were still hot and molten.

Chocolate and Hazelnut Plait

I was in two minds whether to even post this - the puff pastry 'plait' burst open in the oven and the whole thing looked a real mess - but it tasted gorgeous, so the least I can do is give the recipe for the pastry filling!

50g plain chocolate (70%)

40g unsalted butter

75g ground hazelnuts

60g caster sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa

1 egg, separated

1 tablespoon rum

250g puff pastry
1 tablespoon granulated sugar

I put the chocolate, butter, nuts, sugar and cocoa into a mini-chopper and blitzed until everything was the texture of coarse crumbs. This was transferred to a small bowl and the egg yolk and rum was mixed in to make a paste, which was then chilled for 30 minutes.

I rolled out the puff pastry into a rectangle about 20 x 30 cm, and put the chocolate paste down the middle third, along the longest axis of the pastry. Then I sliced the edges of the pastry to give strips to fold over the filling, from alternate sides, to give a plait like appearance. Then the whole thing was brushed with lightly beaten egg white, sprinkled with sugar and chilled for 15 minutes. After chilling, it was baked at 200c for about 30 minutes until the pastry was risen and golden brown.

I think my problem was not enough overlap on the pastry strips - the rectangle of pastry should have been longer, and the filling made into a narrower strip down the middle, giving longer strips to overlap. I've learned something for next time! 

If my description of a pastry plait has left you bewildered, there's a neat little YouTube film here.

Cinnamon Chipotle Brownies

I found this recipe while searching for chilli flavoured brownies; I have one quite good recipe, but that involves toasting and then grinding spices and also needs a few ingredients which I didn't have to hand today. I'll show you that one some other time. I found this Cinnamon Chipotle Brownie recipe on a blog called 'A Mingling of Tastes', which has somehow passed me by during the year I've been paying real attention to food blogs.

As usual, I did a rough conversion to metric weights:
220g 72% chocolate (Green and Black's Dark Cooks' Chocolate, in this case)
170g slightly salted butter

50g plain flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon chipotle chile powder

3 large eggs

200g caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

I followed the recipe as given, although as I was using salted butter I didn't add any extra salt. The method was quick and simple and I didn't have any problems. The lower end of the cooking time was right for my oven.

I had to grind my own chipotle chiles from whole ones, with my little coffee grinder, but I did enough for several batches of these, or for a good few meaty chilli dishes. I split the chiles and discarded the seeds. I used the minimum amount suggested in the recipe (a decision made after licking my fingers after handling the chiles, and getting a lungful of airborn dust from the grinder - ouch!) This seemed the correct choice - I think more would have been too much for a sweet dish.

The brownies are moist, rich and lighter than they look. Because they have so little flour the texture is  almost like a truffle, so they seem to melt in the mouth rather than need any chewing. The spices are well balanced with the chocolate, and the chipotle leaves a lingering warmth which is just right for our tastes. Definitely a recipe to recommend and keep using.

All I need now is for someone to clear up the differences between chile, chilli and chili!

Pear and Ginger Cake

This was a spur of the moment baking idea to use up a few ripe pears which didn't have much flavour. I didn't want a heavy gingerbread type of cake as it seemed too heavy for the exceptionally hot weather we're having at the moment, so I just added a little powdered ginger and some stem ginger (plus some syrup from the jar) to an all-in-one sponge cake mixture. I also drizzled some Dulce de Leche over the pears before baking to improve their flavour. This wasn't visible after baking, so just added to the sweetness rather than giving a visual effect. Because of the caramel, I reduced the sugar in the sponge mix slightly.

This was a moist but still quite light cake, with just the right amount of gingery tang and juicy pieces of pear. Some of the pears were still visible on the surface and some of the larger pieces sank, which was OK, as it gave a more random distribution. It made a great dessert with cream or yogurt.

I apologise for the poor photograph - by the time I realised I hadn't taken a good one, there was nothing left to photograph!

Ingredients

4 small ripe pears, peeled, cored, divided into 6 pieces and held in acidulated water while the batter is mixed.
Batter:

100g butter, softened

120g caster sugar

2 large eggs

50ml sour cream

150g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons powdered ginger

3 balls stem ginger, finely chopped

1 tablespoon of syrup from the ginger jar

75g Dulce de Leche 

Method

Pre-heat oven to 170C, prepare a 8" diameter round springform tin. (I line the base and grease the sides)
Place all the batter ingredients (except the Dulce de Leche) into a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until the batter is smooth. Transfer to the springform tin and level with a spoon.
Drain the pear slices and lay on kitchen paper to dry a little, then arrange neatly on top of the batter.
Drizzle the Dulce de Leche over the pears (I put it into a freezer bag, then cut off the tip to make a piping bag)
Bake for about 50 - 60 minutes until a test probe is clean. Cool in tin.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Tart

I wanted to make something with the soft pastry that a Linzertorte has, but without the nuts. My daughter, visiting for a few days, has a severe peanut allergy which, when first diagnosed, made her wary of eating any nuts. Although we don't think she's allergic to any of them she still prefers not to eat them - cross contamination is often a risk.

I also wanted to do something to preserve the last of the strawberries until she was home, and have always wanted to cook rhubarb and strawberries together. In the end I made a small batch of jam with 350g rhubarb and 150g strawberries, but I think this was too sweet - I should have just cooked the fruit with sugar to taste to make a thick compote. I also didn't cook it enough to give a good set - it was too soft, even after  cooking it again in the tart.

The pastry worked very well and produced the soft result I wanted, but the way I constructed the pie wasn't very pretty as you can see. It was difficult because I'd chosen a fluted tin, but I should have used a rope of pastry around the edge, rather than a strip. This could have then been joined more effectively to the sides. However because the jam was so soft, I was working quickly and couldn't see a way of joining the strip without making a mess. At least I made a 'proper' lattice! Frankly, I was surprised that the finished result looked even remotely photographable - I expected the jam filling to bubble up and cover the lattice during cooking.

For the pastry I used 250g SR flour, 150g butter, 50g icing sugar, 1 egg and water as required to mix to a soft dough. I added the zest of a large orange, a quarter of a teaspoon of cinnamon and a grating of nutmeg to give some of the flavouring of Linzertorte pastry.

Unfortunately the sweetness of the jam overwhelmed any other flavour, and because of the small proportion of strawberries used it was difficult to judge whether rhubarb and strawberries used together is better than either of them used separately.