Persian love cake

Persian love cake

I've been wanting to do something cake wise a bit more unusual for a while now... And the perfect opportunity arose this weekend! Mr B's Auntie had her birthday today, and we had a lovely Sunday lunch. And birthday cake. Yum!

This recipe is a bit changed from what I had found trawling the internet, but certainly something I'll do again. I'm tempted to say it may be one of the best cakes I've ever made (to my taste, anyway. Mr B liked it but, well, his tastes are a little more on the 'coconut and vanilla' side. Seriously, whenever I ask him which cake he would like, it's always 'coconut and vanilla'. Which is lovely, but I mainly want excuses to bake other things too! On the upside, I always know what flavour to make his birthday cakes!) Anyway, I digress....

Onto the cake. It is a cloud of gently exotic loveliness. I can;t take credit for all the recipe as it is heavily inspired by this one... http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Persian-Love-Cake-232273 but with a few alterations, mainly converting to UK stuff and fiddling about with the flavourings and changing the icing.

 Ingredients:

• 3 large eggs, separated
• 1/4 cup (60 ml) sunflower oil
• zest of 2 lemons (unwaxed or washed in warm soapy water)
• 1 cup flour made up of 2 tbsp cornflour and the rest plain flour
• 14 tbsp caster sugar (split into 2 lots of 7 tbsp)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt (flakes, if using fine salt just a pinch)
• 5 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp rosewater (I got mine from Sainsburys, made by the English Provender Co)
• The seeds from 5 cardamom pods, gently crushed in a pestle and mortar or whacked with a big bowl on a chopping board etc. However you want to bash them up!

Method

1. Grease and line 2 20cm (8") sandwich tins. Preheat the oven to 160 ish (degrees C, obvs)
2. Sift the flour, 7 tbsp sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
3. Beat the egg yolks, oil, water, rosewater, lemon zest and cardamom seeds together until combined.
4. In a standalone mixer or with a handheld electric whisk, whisk the egg whites until they're pretty stiff (soft-ish peaks) then add the sugar in three batches, whisky whisky whisking all the time, until you have a lovely fluffy cloud of meringue like fluffy cloudy stuff.
5. Mix flour and yolky stuff together to make a paste (like the talc and the lotion in Friends. Target reference, please ignore if not applicable!!)
6. Sacrifice a big spoonful of your white fluff, and beat it into the yolky floury paste to loosen it, then fold the whole lot of the yolky floury stuff into your egg white cloud CAREFULLY! Just fold it until just combined.
7. Spoon into tins, level out very gently and bake for about 30-35 mins, checking after 25 or so that they're not catching on top.

Filling / decorating - I chose to make a rose marshmallow fluff frosting, exactly as per the Devils Food recipe on this blog but with 3 tbsp of the water replaced with rosewater and omitting the vanilla. Method just as before, loads of whisking and quite a lot of whisking. Then some whisking.

I filled the centre with fluff, then added some of my favourite things...

pistachios!!! My favorite nut du jour. Although, being fickle, next week I'll probe love a cashew more. Or maybe even a macadamia. And Mrs Rock, if you're reading, I'm sorry!! You could leave them out!!

Then... Spread frosting over the whole thing. I left pistachios to just decorate the top as I didn't want knobbly bits in my marshmallow thanks very much. But you might, and I promise I won't mind if you do :)

I used freeze dried strawbs and more pistachios (with glitter, obvs) to decorate mine, but had it been summertime I'd have picked some rose petals from the garden (only if no peticides have been used so they're edible. Again, I don't like decorating cakes with anything I can;t eat, but feel free to use whatever you like on yours. Except maybe anything that weighs more than 10g as the cake is pretty delicate!!

Please enjoy... I'm now beginning a mild obsession with anything rosewater or orange blossom flavoured. You have been warned...!

JB x

Fast day dinner - My Mum's soup :)

Thursday = fasting day for me. Today, i munched my way through (or rather 'slurped') one cup of tea (essential in the morning. I love love love my tea more than anything, apart from probably my husband), one cup of miso soup and another tea. Total until dinnertime - about 40 calories...

So dinner today is my Mum's 'golden soup' recipe. Nutritious and delicious and low calorie. Wins all round. Here's how it goes...

1. Chop an onion, roughly, finely, however you fancy. Optional fancy dress - stripy jumper and garlic on a string round your neck.
2. Fry it until it's a bit brownish around some edges in 1 teaspoon of olive oil.
3. Add 4 medium carrots, quite finely sliced, and 3 peppers (red and yellow are perfect, green is a little bitter for this recipe. And it would make your soup a kinds funky brown instead of nice and 'golden'...)
4. Add some flavour - a stock cube, a squidge of tomato puree, a slosh of balsamic vinegar and a decent rounded teaspoon of smoked paprika.
5. Add a tin of tomatoes and about 1.5 litres of boiling water, simmer it all for 10-15 mins, blitz with a stick blender or in a food processor.
6. Serve with a dollop of low fat natural yogurt. Rejoice in your healthy bowl of orangey deliciousness!

Here it is in picture form...

Onions...

Peppers...

Stuff in  pan...

Bowl of yum

By my (and MFP) calculations this whole batch has 500 calories in, and makes 4 big fat bowlfuls. Add about 20 calls for yogurt and if you use veg bullion powder it would be gluten free too.

So that's my 150 calorie dinner! Enough calories left over for a bowl of frozen berries defrosted and drizzled with honey and yogurt. Deeeeee-lish!

Roasted butternut squash canneloni

Dinner tonight...

Roasted butternut squash canneloni. Yum! I'm going to put my Nigellissima hat on now and claim that this is 'inspired' by Italy, certainly not an actual Italian recipe from actual Italy. It tastes lush though so who cares?! I made this up as it has some of my favourite ingredients in and is a lovely winter warmer for a brrrrrrr chilly evening.

It doesn't take long - maybe an hour and a bit start to finish, but a lot of this is just while stuff is in the oven. You could hurry it along by buying ready made pancakes, or roasting your squash beforehand. This amount fed tow hungryish people with a portion left for Mr B's lunch tomorrow. Win.

1. Roast some squash - I used half a bigg'un.
 Dice into about 1.5cm dice, roast 180 degrees
for 30 mins in a drizzle of oil.

2. Schmoodge a pot of ricotta cheese with a good bit of nutmeg.

 3. Mix the squash in. Squash it a bit. Squash the squash.

4. Make some pancakes (batter mix pack or 110g plain flour, 1 egg, 280mls milk. Whatevs. I made 6.)


5. Season the filling, roll the filling in the pancakes.

6. Make a quick tomato sauce - tinned toms simmered with a splash of red vermouth (or open a tin of pasta sauce!), then put half of it in the bottom of an ovenproof dish.

7. Place your pancakes on your sauce, put the rest of the tommy sauce on top, grated cheese. Oven, 30 mins. This is what you get...

All kinds of delicious! Even if I do say so myself...

I might try mixing it up with different fillings - spinach, peppers, bolognese, leftover chilli... All wrapped in pancakes, smothered in sauce and cheesed. Yum yum!!

PS - saturday's cake project is ON!!! I'm pretty excited. I also have a cake date next week... Photos and recipes to follow!

Fast day dinner

So today, being a Monday, is a fasting day (or 500 cals for women, 600 for men). For me that was a big fat cup of tea this morning, then water and peppermint tea until dinner, which has just gone down the hatch. It was lovely, and enough calories for some raspberries for pud and a tea later. Rock and indeed roll!!

Spiced salmon salad... not the most interesting dinner but yummy!

Salmon fillet (100g = 200 calories) plus a ton of cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes with a sprinkling of olives and balsamic, 300 calories. Plus 75g raspberries for pudding, a princely total of 320 calories for dinner. Not bad! Plus some milk in tea and a small handful of sultanas, a nice 500 calorie day :)

Not to say I'm not having kind of mildly fantastical thoughts about the chocolate cake which is burning a hole in the kitchen table! More fasting day recipes as I do them... Next one on Thurs!

The fast diet

Since the beginning of this year (so about 3 weeks!!) I've been following the diet Dr Michael Mosely covered on the BBC's Horizon programme last year. It involves having 500 calories 2 days per week, and eating normally the rest of the time.


Why? Well, I like science. I'm a geek. I am doing a PhD part time as part of my job into biologically related science, which I unashamedly love! So I read the papers, as the programme made it sound massively advantageous. And I liked what I read - reduce your blood pressure, increase your insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammatory markers?! Yes please! Oh - and I can still drink wine, eat cake and chocolate in moderation. Win.

So it seems pretty successful so far - I'll try my best to post recipes / photos of 'fasting day' meals when I can. I've found it works best for me to skip breakfast, lunch and then eat 500 calories for dinner on those days, but that's just me.

Just to reiterate - I'm not promoting this in any way - google it, read the research if you like, then decide if it's right for you. I personally like it, but it's only been 3 weeks!

Tomorrow is a fasting day; dinner will be salmon and tons of salad. Will post soon!

Cupcakes... yes please...

Just thought, in my first flush of blog-dom, I'd post a few pics of cupcakes I've made. Cos they make me happy. Any potentially type II diabetic later down the line but hey-ho, more on that later...

Arctic gastronomy!

I thought I'd post a few pics from when Mr B and I went to Norway just before Christmas. We had an AMAZING meal in a restaurant called Emma's in Tromso - easily as good as some Michelin starred places we've eaten. And no, we're not knobby types who eat in Michelin starred places all the time (and say yaaaaaaaaaaar instead of yes and have a fondness for chinos and boat shoes) but we do love a good posh feed when we've saved up some pennies and calories for a while.

So here goes... again, apologies for iPhone photos. Couldn;t bring myself to bring out the actual camera in a restaurant. I'm not quite that shameless yet (but give me time... I'm still new to this blogging stuff!!)

Amuse bouche - reindeer, salmon and almonds. And lordy, was my bouche amused.

Starter - salmon very lightly poached with parsley, malt crisps and the most in-cre-dib-le celeriac mayonnaise. Never thought I'd type that sentence...

Cured reindeer with baby beets, mushroom mayonnaise, picked mushrooms and beetroot meringue. As you do (sorry Rudolph)

Cloudberry sorbet. Made my teeth go weird in a purple, red wine kind of a way. Annoyingly this happens a lot to me. 

Cod, barbecue pork belly, pearl barley risotto and fennel. Gert ruddy lush.

Duck. Spud. Apple. Cloudberry. 'Nuff said.

Oh. My. Days. This is probably the best thing I have EVER tasted, hence two photos. Chocolate five ways (yup, I know) and blood orange sorbet with vanilla scented orange segments. Just all kinds of amazing in one pudding. I'd be willing to fly there again just for one night of heaven with this plate of food...

So there it is. Mr/s Michelin inspector - get your foodie bottoms up to Tromso and award this restaurant what it deserves!!!

Bread

I am hugely into baking bread at the moment. For many reasons - I enjoy it, I like to fool myself into thinking it is better for me than shop bought (which in a chemical sense is entirely true; yeast, flour, salt, water are all nice and natural unlike all sorts of weird preservatives etc in shop bought) and it fills the house with a lovely smell. So here are a few of my recipes / tips for happy bread making.

General tips:

1. Don't be afraid to try something new. The birds can always be well fed if your bread goes Pete Tong.
2. Make sure you knead your dough enough to begin with. When stretched between your finders, white dough should go so thin you can see through it like a little magical dough window. Wholemeal or rye dough won't stretch as far but should have a good stretch to it.
3. Leave it somewhere toasty to prove. If it's too chilly, this stage can still be done but will take ages - I like to leave mine in front of the fire in winter or near a radiator. Generally anywhere you would sit if you were a cat.
4. Grease or line your tins or trays. I'm lazy so I hate washing up. Also stuck bread dough can be like trying to chisel weetabix off your bowl when it's been left for days...
5. Freeze bread - in my experience a quick blast in the microwave revives most to my satisfaction. 

Basic bread:

• 500g strong flour - white or 50:50 wholemeal to white. All wholemeal makes kind of solid, mildly cake like bread. Unless that's what you want, in which case go for it.
• 10g fresh yeast - ask at the bakery counter in the supermarket. It's kind of lovely plastic-y play dough-y putty like stuff that smells amazing.
• 5g fine salt - I use sea salt flakes bashed up in a pestle and mortar but only cos that's what I have, not cos I'm posh or 'owt
• 300g warm liquid - water, milk, 50:50 etc. I don't mind. Weigh it instead of measuring jugs - weigh more accurate (sorry, terrible pun. This is why I'm not a comedian.)

Method:

1.  Rub yeast into flour roughly as if you were making crumble or pastry. 
2. Stir in salt. 
3. Add water. 
4. Mix with a spoon. 
5. Knead for 10 mins by hand or 5-6 mins in a mixer with a dough hook. 
6. Leave to double in size (an hour or so) in a big bowl covered with cling film or a shower cap from a hotel. Maybe not a used one.
7. Shape into rolls, loaves, baguettes, whatever you like. Cover with oiled cling film, leave again for 45 mins or so.
8. Bake at as hot as your oven will go for approx 20 mins for small loaves / rolls, 30 mins for big'uns. Tap on the bottom - if it sounds hollow it's done.
9. Leave to cool then dig in!

I felt I had to put lots of steps in to make myself sound clever. I'm not, and bread isn't difficult, I promise. 

Devils food cake...

Devil's food cake... Yum yum!!

So yesterday we had some lovely friends over for dinner. Although not quite as many as hoped due to the silly snow... but still, friends were joining us. Which means one thing in this house. Cake. (Any excuse really, but this is a good'un.)

My lovely Mum bought me the Great British Bake Off book for Christmas, so this was one of the obvious books I trawled looking for something fun to do last week. I am a MASSIVE marshmallow fan so when I came across this chocolatey wonder covered in a sugar fluff cloud, decision made. 

The results were pretty darned good, although apologies for the mobile phone pic taken in haste - we couldn't wait to get stuck in! Below is my slightly adulterated recipe; reasons for which after!

Devil's food cake with marshmallow fluff frosting

Cake:

• 4 tbsp cocoa powder
• 175ml boiling water
• 1 tsp bicarb
• 125g dark (70% cocoa solids) chocolate
• 125ml natural yogurt (or cream. Or soured cream. Whatever dairy type shiz you have hanging around that's kinds goopy would probably do.)
• 300g plain flour
• 2 large free range eggs from happy chickens
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (not fake flavouring if you can help it)
• 125g stork margerine or own brand similar article (or softened butter if you are someone who can actually remember to take it out of the fridge. If you are, I want to be like you when I grow up.)
• 350g caster sugar

Frosting:

• 2 egg whites from large happy chicken eggs (or 3 small ones)
• 350g white caster sugar (diabetics look away now...)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 125ml cold water
• Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C (fan). Grease and line a 7" (17 or 18cm) tin, ideally loose bottomed*. It needs to be nice and tall - please also adapt to use 2 sandwich tins baked for less time if you prefer.

*Very juvenile but that phrase still makes me smile a bit...

So, cake method is a bit more convoluted than I'm used to but please bear with.

1. Melt choc. Microwave 40s does it for me. If you're very good you can bowl-over-simmering-water-it but don't hate me because I can never be bothered.
2. Mix the 4tbsp cocoa powder with the 175ml boiling water. Add bicarb. Admire your fizzy weird looking bowl and wonder if you did the right thing. You did.
3. Beat eggs with vanilla in yet another bowl - I know, there are loads of bowls to wash up. Sorry. I advise a dishwasher / husband / friend / significant other / hired help.
4. In a freestanding mixer (or handheld electric whisk), beat the daylights out of the marg and sugar until it resembles a pale cloud of loveliness. Takes a good few mins.
5. Gradually add your eggs and vanilla to the fat / sugar combo, beating continuously as you go to ensure it doesn't curdle too much. If it does, meh. I won't tell if you don't.
6. Alternate spoons of the soured cream with a dump of the flour until it's all combined. Stop the mixer now so you don't stretch the gluten and make a rubber brick instead of a cake...
7. Finally, add your chocolate fizzy water and melted chocolate and fold in by hand until you have a homogenous mass of chocolate loviness. Pour into your tin. Bake for 60 mins until a skewer comes out COMPLETELY clean...!!!

So, the reasons for my shouting of COMPLETELY was that my first effort looked gorgeous. Risen, perfect, springy and smelt amazing. I congratulated myself on my cleverness and smugly went off to bed, letting it cool. In the morning, I came downstairs to a sunken, very sad looking mess. The middle of the cake was significantly undercooked... So I tasted a bit, decided it needed a bit more chocolate, adjusted the recipe and went in for round 2. Result - no sinkage! 

This cake would be amazing filled and iced with a nice chocolate buttercream, ganache or fudge icing, it's a versatile, medium bodied nice cake. I find it does need filling though, as it can be a little on the heavy side without a bit of moisture to lighten it up. I personally lived mine into three layers and filled and covered it with marshmallow frosting as below:

Frosting method: You will need an electric whisk. This stuff is amazing, but not physically possible without some electrical assistance in my view...

1. Place a big heatproof bowl over some simmering water in a pan, not letting the water touch the bottom of the pan. I can actually be bothered with this here as I don't want an egg white omelette on my cake!
2. Dump all ingredients in. Mix briefly with a spoon, then whisk, whisk, whisk over the heat for about 5-7 minuted in full whisking power.
3. Once it's smooth, voluminous and able to hold a soft peak, remove from the heat and continue to whisk, whisk, whisk for another 12-15 minutes until stiffened into some kind of consistency you can spread. (I did this stage in the free-standing mixer and made myself some well earned tea).
4. Remove from bowl, fill and frost cake, lick excess from bowl, marvel at the wonders of eggy sugary science.

So that's it! I have to say, this was even better the next day. Kind of richer tasting. The frosting has given me inspiration for another recipe I want to try for my hub's Great Auntie's b-day next weekend... More on that when it's happened!

So scrumbtious

So Scrumbtious...

Here it is! A new blog by me, JB. I'll post recipes, general musings and the occasional bit of nice stuff about fashion and beauty. But mainly cake :)

Hope you enjoy!