Christmas Eve turnip salad

We had dinner with a few friends on Christmas Eve. Among other things, I made a salad with small turnips. I was excited about these when Alvin dropped them off to me among other CSA goodies - I had some once before and roasted them, which was the wrong thing to do - I realised after doing it that I should have followed my gut and made salad. This latest lot were beauties: white and perfectly smooth, with lovely, green, healthy leaves. The leaves tasted lovely - slightly peppery, less so than rocket, quite similar to mizuna, also in texture (quite juicy and big, not tough in the slightest). (NB I thought the cinnamon and cranberries made it Christmassy?).

1 bunch of small (~ping pong ball sized) turnips, greens and roots separated, trimmed, washed and dried
juice of 1/2 a lime
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp maple syrup
salt+pepper
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
handful pumpkin seeds, toasted
handful dried cranberries
petals of 3 agamous marigold flowers

Scrape the turnip roots if they need it, then slice them thinly. Put in a serving bowl with the lime, vinegar, oil, maple syrup, cinnamon, salt and pepper, toss and leave while you prep the rest of the stuff. Roughly chop the turnip leaves. Right before serving, add the pumpkin seeds, cranberries, turnip leaves and marigold petals to the turnip root mixture and toss.


This was prob the best thing I made. Really into the turnip leaves and roots: both are lovely and softly peppery / crisp. And the marigolds were probably the last thing I'll harvest from the balcony this year.

Sugaring wax

Sporadically, I wax my own legs at home. I always use sugaring wax rather than hardcore salon wax because it is so easy to wash off any drips or mistakes. Previously, I had bought it, but I just realised how it is basically just sugar and looked for a recipe. The only potentially awkward part was judging when it had reached the right consistency (like for caramel or jam) - I decided to give it a shot. This awesomely detailed recipe convinced me it was worth a try.

1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup water

Put all ingredients in a small saucepan and heat, stirring, until boiling. Boil gently for ~20 min, monitoring the colour carefully (by swirling and by checking drops on a white plate. When it is a light amber colour (the colour of typical runny honey) it should be ready. At this point a drop on a plate at room temperature should also become thick and sticky as it cools. Allow to cool slightly and transfer to a heatproof jar.

To use, put base of jar in a bowl of very hot water until the sugaring solution is slightly liquid. Stir with a plastic spatula and use the spatula to apply. Smooth on in direction of growth and use denim strips to remove quickly.


It worked really well! Very happy with it, and I reckon this quantity should do at least 10 half leg waxes.

Quick aubergine with nigella seeds

1 large aubergine, chopped into 1cm dice
1/2 tsp nigella seeds
1/2 tsp salt
~4 tbsp olive oil

Heat olive oil in a frying pan with high sides. Add the aubergine, nigella seeds and salt (to taste) and stir / fry for ~10 minutes, until the aubergine is tender and tasty.


Simple and effective: a lot of my aubergine recipes are relatively long and complicated - this one is super quick.

Raspberry-almond buns (gluten-free)

Seb made me a birthday cake with lemon cake and raspberry icing. He woke me up with cake and candles. He did an awesome job. Not to mention the day of presents and greetings and surprise friend-mob of a house show and whole room of lovely people singing 'Happy Birthday' to me with yet another cake+candles...

There was some icing left over. I wanted to use it up, got a copy of 'Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World' for my birthday (exciting: I look at her blog often but didn't have any of their books), and am having a GF person over for dinner tomorrow night so decided it would be a good idea to test out the GF vanilla cupcake recipe and top it with the leftover raspberry icing. Of course I didn't have the exact right combination of GF flours so didn't exactly follow the recipe, but nevertheless they came out quite well.

(made 11, could have filled a bit less full to make 12)

1 cup soy milk
1/3 cup veg oil
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
1/4 tsp almond essence
1/4 cup tapioca flour (used glutinous rice flour)
2 tbsp ground linseed
1/3 cup corn flour or almond flour (used corn masa flour)
1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup quinoa flour (used ragi flour = millet flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt

Heat oven to 350F and line muffin tin. Mix milk, oil, sugar and essences in a large bowl. Add tapioca flour and linseed and mix thoroughly. Add corn flour, rice flour, quinoa flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt and mix thoroughly (don't worry about overmixing). Fill cups and bake for 20-25 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before icing.


Gosh, these look like they should be for a little girl's birthday party or something. The buns rose quite nicely and also taste pretty good: the predominant flavour is almond - it would appear that almond essence is pretty powerful stuff. S assures me the colour of the icing is entirely from raspberry, which is awesome... He doesn't remember what recipe he used but I suspect it may have been this one.

Icing:
1/2 cup coconut oil, softened
1/2 cup margarine, softened
3 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2-3 tbsp raspberry jam
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp cornstarch

Heat 3 tbsp raspberry jam in a pan. Mix cornstarch with a bit of water and add to the raspberry jam. Stir until it become clear and thick. Push the sauce through a sieve to remove the raspberry seeds. Beat the softened coconut oil and margarine together to a fluffy mixture. Add the icing sugar alternated with the raspberry sauce and vanilla. Beat to a smooth and even consistency. (note: S had evidently had trouble softening the coconut oil as it is Winter and so I warmed the icing a little and beat it some more to make it smoother and more evenly coloured, which worked well).


I decorated them with flaked almonds, basil flowers and red sugar crystals.


These taste most strongly of almond.  Quite nice texture.  Alvin liked them.  They froze well (apart from the flowers, obv).

Marzipan balls

Grandma and I were excited to find a 1920s cookery book when we were sorting through a box of books that used to be Mum's: Miss Tuxford's Cookery for the Middle Classes (9th Edition, 1927) (see also Green Tomato Jam). A lot of the recipes that I bookmarked were, predictably, in the chapter 'Bread and Cakes'. One I was most interested in trying was for 'Almond Paste'. Elsewhere, the almond paste was used to make 'Marzipan Potatoes', which I thought sounded utterly silly but also kind of delicious.

4 oz ground almonds
2 oz icing sugar
2 oz caster sugar (used granulated)
1/3 tbsp orange blossom water
1/3 tbsp rum (note: in the book, rum is included in the recipe for almond paste but not for marzipan potatoes)
few drops almond essence
1/3 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 3/4 tbsp hot water
cocoa and (optional) gold dust for rolling

Mix the ground almonds and sugars in a bowl with a fork. Add the orange blossom water, rum and almond essence and mix in with a fork. Add the linseed mixture and continue to mix with a fork, finally bringing everything together with your hands. Break off small (cherry sized) pieces and roll into balls. Put 1-2 tbsp of cocoa powder in a small bowl along with optional gold dust, then roll the marzipan ball around in the cocoa until covered. Transfer to a baking tray lined with baking paper and leave to dry out.

I made 1/3 of the marzipan recipe (with a few minor adaptations), and that made 16 marzipan balls. They were never really going to look like potatoes, I can't call them that. But they are quite delicious and look quite luxurious (a bit like truffles), and appropriately seasonal (if a little quirky). It's good to know how to make marzipan / I was glad to use some of my collection of little bottles of big flavour (rum, orange blossom water, almond essence, yummmm).

These kept quite well: at least a month at room temperature. The cocoa becomes less dusty but other than that they are the same.

Sesame star mince pies (gluten-free)

I made these two years ago, but did not make them completely gluten free (used plain flour instead of the gram/rice mix). I really liked the pastry though - much more interesting than normal pastry. This time I went the whole hog and they are fully GF. The source of the recipe has now truly disappeared into the ether, but I found it somewhere on the internet back then.

(these quantities make 12, when bases cut using Coke glass and baked in regular-sized bun tin)

50g ground almonds
60g cooked chickpeas, mashed to a stiff paste
100g gluten-free plain flour (or 50g gram flour, 50g rice flour)
2 tbsp sesame seeds
40g margarine (or cold-pressed plain sesame or safflower oil)
water, to bind
1 400g jar of mincemeat

Combine seeds, ground almonds, flour and ground chickpeas. Rub in fat and mix with a fork. Add a little water to combine. Rest in the fridge 30min.

Heat oven to 400F / 200C. Roll out the pastry to about 2 mm thick and cut into rounds for pie bases (deep fill used tall plastic measure beaker / normal size used Coke glass). Put bases into bun / muffin tin. Fill with mincemeat or a mixture of mincemeat and cooked apple. Cut out stars (I freehanded) and put them on the tops. Bake for 20-35 min, til lightly browned and crisp. Leave to cool before trying to remove from trays.


The mincemeat I made 2 years ago was still in good nick, so that's what I used for these. I did see mincemeat in Stop n Shop the other day though, for future reference. The pastry was perhaps relatively brittle due to the use of GF flours, but it rolled out OK. I'm wondering if the gram flour was a mistake: it does have quite a pungent taste. Truth will be in the eating - they are cooling right now.

They are good! The pastry is nice and crunchy and robust, and delicious in combination with the mincemeat. The gram taste has baked out. The pastry isn't like regular mince pie pastry, but I think it's better.

Only thing is, the combo of the GF pastry (which cracks quite easily) and the runnier than normal mincemeat (because I used booze instead of fat to preserve it) means the liquid has seeped through the bottoms of a few of the pies and they were kind of welded onto the pans... still came off, but a couple lost a small part of the base. I guess I could have taken more care cutting them out and getting them into the tins...


Note: these freeze (baked) very well: can basically eat them straight from the freezer.

Rye and black pepper loaf

I bought some rye flour the other day and got excited about bread baking prospects. I browsed Dan Lepard's recipes on the Guardian webpage (I am in love with his recipes: they are just the right mix of adventurous, interesting, simple and downright tasty) until I came across this one. The mixture of rye, black pepper, caraway and poppy seeds sounded like something I should love 100%, and the use of coffee intrigued me.

325ml regular black coffee, warm or cold
150g rye flour
2 tsp crushed black pepper
2 tsp anise, fennel or caraway seeds (used caraway)
1 tsp dry instant yeast
1½ tsp salt
325g strong white bread flour, plus extra for shaping
fake milk and poppy seeds, to finish

Put the coffee in a saucepan along with half the rye flour, the pepper and your seeds of choice. Whisk, heat until thick and just boiling, then spoon into a mixing bowl and set aside to cool until warm. Add the yeast, mix well, add the salt, the remaining rye flour and the white flour, then mix to a smooth dough. Cover, leave for 10 minutes, then knead for 10 seconds. Cover, repeat twice more at 10-minute intervals, then leave for 30 minutes.

Line a baking tray with nonstick baking parchment. Using a little flour, pat out the dough into a 20cm square, then roll up tightly. Place the dough seam side down on the tray, cover with a cloth and leave to rise for 45 minutes. Brush the top with soy milk, sprinkle with poppy seeds, cut six diagonal slashes across the top and bake at 220C/425F/gas mark 7 for 40-45 minutes.


I had a brain freeze and got utterly confused about how long it had been proving for - there's a good chance it had not been long enough. It is still lovely though: the black pepper, caraway, poppy seeds and darkness go very well together, and very well with the celeriac and porcini soup I made at the same time.

Celeriac and porcini soup

We have lots of celeriac right now. I love the stuff: it's one of the most wonderful and versatile vegetables, in my opinion (despite being ugly as hell): great taste and texture, lovely raw in salads, souped / pureed, roasted, boiled with lentils, I could go on...  Grandma and I bought one recently and made a soup, mixed it with potatoes for mash on a shepherd's pie, blanched and pan-fried some with parsnips, made a salad with apple...

I wanted to try something new, and came across this recipe (slightly adapted here) in my trusty New Covent Garden Soup Company cookbook.

2 oz margarine
1 medium onion, finely chopped
110g / 4 oz celeriac, peeled and roughly chopped
15g (1/2 oz) dried porcini mushrooms, soaked for 20 minutes with 150 ml (1/4 pint) boiling water
290 ml (1/2 pint) water
200 ml fake milk (subbing this and vinegar for creme fraiche)
1 tsp cider vinegar
2 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper

'prepared fresh ground' horseradish (the stuff you buy in a jar in the fridge section) to serve

Melt the marg in a large saucepan and add the onion and celeriac. Cook, covered, for about 20 min without colouring. Add the porcini soaking liquor, chop the porcini and add, along with the water and thyme. Cover, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 15-20 minutes or until the veg are all tender. Cool slightly, then liquidise.

Add the soy milk and vinegar and taste for seasoning.  Reheat gently and serve swirled with horseradish.


This is interesting. Rich, earthy flavours. S thought I was cooking meat!?! Can't decide whether the porcini or the celeriac dominates, perhaps that means it's perfectly balanced? I felt like the horseradish really brought it to life - strongly suggest adding it (full disclosure: I'm loving horseradish in everything right now).

If making this again in future, I might just use some of the dried mushroom powder I have - would save the whole soaking / chopping mushrooms bit and be a great use for them. I doubled the recipe and used a 25g packet of porcini from TJ's, and one small celeriac (still got 2 large ones left to use!).

Ginger-Chocolate Gradient Cake

When someone in my lab has a birthday it is the responsibility of the last person who had a birthday to make them a cake. The other girl in my lab (Andrea) and I both have December birthdays. Mine is so close to Christmas it always gets a little lost in all the other sweet treats and festivities. This year we decided a while ago that it would be fun to get together and make one big cake for both our birthdays and have it in between. Originally this was because we wanted to reprise our amazing rainbow cake for a big enough audience to eat it. But when it came to now we felt like doing something a little different. So we took two of our favourite things, ginger and chocolate, and stuck with layers (four this time) and decided to geek it up with a lab themed gradient (our lab does a fair bit of work on developmental patterning involving morphogen gradients).

For the cake (this quantity makes 4 fat layers):
(based on this recipe)
6 cups flour
2 cups finely chopped crystallised ginger

Both photos taken by Paul

4 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups (packed) golden brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups plus 4 tbsp buttermilk
~1 cup cocoa powder

Inner icing:
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp granulated sugar
3 tbsp water
3 scant cups icing sugar
2 tsp ground ginger

Outer icing:
12 oz 70% chocolate
1 cup hot water

Decoration:
Edible gold dust
Crystallised ginger, chopped

Heat oven to 350F. Grease four 8-inch round cake tins and line the bottoms with baking paper. Mix flour, crystallized ginger, ground ginger, bicarb and salt with a fork in a medium bowl. Beat butter and sugar in a separate, large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating until well blended after each addition. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in three additions each, scraping down sides of bowl. Beat just until smooth.

Divide batter between four bowls and add cocoa or additional ginger so that each bowl has more chocolate and less ginger than the last: going from very gingery and no cocoa to very chocolatey and less ginger. Check the batters are of similar consistency, then put each into a separate prepared cake tin. Bake cakes until skewer comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool for 10 min then turn cakes out and cool completely.

For the inner icing, heat the water, granulated sugar and butter in a small pan, then add the icing sugar and ground ginger and mix until smooth. Allow to cool.

For the outer icing, melt the chocolate then add the hot water and beat until smooth.

To assemble, put the darkest layer on a plate and smear with 1/3 of the inner icing. Sprinkle with chopped crystallised ginger. Put the next darkest layer on top and repeat. Add the second lightest layer and spread with the last 1/3 of inner icing, then put the lightest layer on top. Dump the outer icing on top and use a straight-edged knife or palette knife to smear it all around the outside of the cake, covering the top and sides as evenly as you can. Use remaining preserved ginger and gold dust to make a decoration on top (we did a shooting star).


Could perhaps have done with more inner icing (think we're both of the less is more camp when it comes to icing in general). The outer icing was obviously basically just chocolate but I was into that. The cake was quite dense and heavy (I blame the buttermilk) so it added up to a massive piece of cake. If using this recipe I might have used 3/4 of the cake recipe quantity and split it in 4 still. Or used less batter and made more of a simple Victoria sponge (my original thought) with added ginger / cocoa, just putting the preserved ginger between the layers and on top - would be lighter.

Bavarian sweet mustard

We made this at Carly's to go with pretzels. Took quite a lot of grinding with pestle and mortar - might have been easier with a spice grinder to hand...

250g split yellow mustard seeds
50g brown mustard seeds
1 tsp ground cloves
generous pinch of salt
200g sugar
350ml cider vinegar

Lightly crush the brown mustard seeds in a mortar; should remain very coarse. Put yellow and brown mustard seeds, cloves and salt in a bowl.

In a medium-sized saucepan, melt the sugar and let it caramelise. Stir constantly, so sugar will not burn; the colour should be a nice dark brown. Once the sugar has caramelised, slowly add the vinegar and allow the caramel to dissolve.

Pour the vinegar into the bowl with the mustard and spices and stir quickly. You may use the blender to achieve a finer texture, but it should remain grainy, not smooth. If the mixture is too thick, simply add more vinegar.

Pour the hot mustard into sterilised jars and seal them. The mustard will need to mature for 5 to 6 weeks (preferably in the fridge or a cool cellar). By then, all the bitterness will have disappeared. Always stir before using, as some dark liquid may collect at the bottom of the jar.

Custard

I had three egg yolks left over from making zimtsterne, needed to use them up. I have long been of the opinion that Bird's custard beats out real custard by a mile, thought I should check this out once and for all. Used this recipe.

1 1/2 cups milk
2 tsp cornflour
1 tbsp sugar
3 egg yolks
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Mix 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornflour in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. When the cornflour is dissolved, slowly add the rest of the milk and sugar, and cook over moderate heat until the sauce starts to thicken and comes to a boil. Remove from heat.

In a small bowl, beat egg yolks with a fork. Take a cup of the mixture, and slowly add to the eggs, beating briskly as you pour. Stir the egg mixture back into the saucepan mixture. Bring back to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and add the vanilla.


Definitely far inferior to Bird's. Next time I have leftover egg yolks I shall make something else - perhaps a version of egg yolk ravioli.

Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars)

There is a wonderful array of German Christmas biscuits out there: we've been eating our way through lebkuchen and chocolate covered lebkuchen herzen from Lidl and from Trader Joe's already. Then there's Pfeffernusse, Vanillekipferle... so many beautiful things. They really know that they are doing when it comes to Christmas, those Germans. S's favourite are Zimtsterne, so I wanted to make some. I've never made these before, but I've been feeling like doing some Christmas baking, especially since visiting the Christmas market in Edinburgh.

I got this recipe from my colleague Nik, who is German and a consummate baking pro. It appears deceptively simple: just almonds, cinnamon, egg whites and sugar - they're delicious and it's quite fiddly to make and ice all the little stars.

3 egg whites
250 g icing sugar
400 g ground almonds (plus more flour or ground almonds for dusting)
2 tsp cinnamon

Beat the egg whites to shiny peaks, then fold in the icing sugar a tablespoon or so at a time. Set aside ~80g to use as icing.

Mix the cinnamon and almonds, then fold into the remaining sugar mixture.

Dust your surface with flour or ground almonds, then roll out the mass until ~1 cm thick. Cut out star shapes and transfer them to baking trays.

Thinly (1-2 mm) spread the icing set aside earlier onto the biscuits. You should not be able to see through the icing.

Allow cookies to dry over night uncovered at room temperature.

Bake at 325F / 160C for 8 minutes on medium rack. Allow to cool. They should keep for several weeks in a container.

I thought these were lovely.  I was too chicken to take some in to Nik for testing, but S liked them. I took advantage of their long keeping time and sent some to each of my stepsisters back in the UK.


Now I am trying to think of something to do with the three egg yolks - custard is one option; egg yolk ravioli is another, more exciting option...

Date spread

We had the most wonderful date spread at A Naestu Grosum in Reykjavik, three years ago. I remembered it when I saw this recipe, also remembered a packet of dates I'd had in the cupboard for a while. Had been eating dates at Grandma's and thinking about how much I like them. This all seemed very seasonally appropriate, somehow.

(made a half quantity, used pretty much a whole packet of dates (apart from a few that went in my mouth... it was plenty - it's quite rich)

2 1/2 cups dates, pitted and chopped
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 cups water
1 tbsp lemon zest
2 tbsp ginger, grated
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried red pepper flakes
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp cocoa

Put all the ingredients in a small pan and simmer until almost all of the water is evaporated (about 30 minutes).

Remove from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. Puree until smooth. Eat warm or cold, with seedy bread or raw veg.

Mum's 'Red Dragon' bean pie

This is sort of a veg shepherd's pie. Grandma looked out the recipe while I was in Edinburgh and made it for me. She had got the recipe from Mum. In fact, as she looked through her recipe folders she found that she had got the recipe from Mum twice: she had two different copies, both handwritten by Mum. Seeing Mum's handwriting is one of those things that makes her seem so near yet so far - I remember tearing out and keeping all these little bits of paper where she'd signed my schoolwork: I didn't want to forget what her writing looked like, same as I didn't want to forget anything else about her.

The pie was really tasty - a bit 70s perhaps, but lovely. Grandma gave me one copy of the recipe and I've brought it back with me: I made it for S today (with black eyed beans) and he liked it.

For filling:
4 oz aduki beans (or similar)
2 oz wheat grain or rice (used rice)
1 onion, chopped
8 oz grated carrot (used about 5 medium-small ones)
1-2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp mixed herbs (used mix of oregano, basil, thyme)
1/2 pint bean stock
salt+pepper

For topping:
~4 medium potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed with
-marg, olive oil, fake milk, salt+pepper to taste

Soak the beans overnight, then cook. Cook the rice. Cook the potatoes separately, then mash with oil/marg, milk, salt+pepper (we used a mixture of potato and celeriac and it was yum).

Fry the onion and carrot. Add the rest of the filling ingredients to the onion and carrot and simmer until thickened.

Put the filling in an ovenproof dish, top with the mashed potato, and bake in a 400F oven for 20-30 min until the top of the mashed potato has started to brown and the filling is bubbling.

Note: I followed the recipe fairly approximately - used ingredients as above but just guessed quantities.

Rye and honey soda bread

I've come across a few recipes featuring rye flour recently but have never owned any. Today I stopped by the Russian store and bought a bag (I also found some 00 flour and got confused thinking it was the right one for pasta, ah well it should be good for pizza though).

I was thinking about making soda bread (it's so lovely and quick compared to yeasted bread, and I wanted some bread in the freezer), and this recipe seemed like a great idea: both rye and soda.

250g light rye flour, plus a little extra for dusting
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
20g each sunflower, sesame, poppy and linseeds (or 80g seedy mix of your choice)
100ml plain yoghurt (used 200ml soy milk plus 1 tsp cider vinegar instead of yoghurt+milk)
100ml whole milk
50g runny honey
1 tbsp rapeseed oil, plus extra for greasing (used olive oil)

Heat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Grease a baking tray and dust lightly with flour. In a bowl, mix the flour, bicarb, salt and seeds. In a jug, whisk the milk+vinegar, honey and oil, then pour into the dry ingredients and mix quickly but thoroughly to form a very sticky dough.

Scoop the dough on to the tray – you may find it easier to scrape it out with a spatula – and form it into a rough round about 7-8cm high. Don't worry if it's a bit of a sticky mess – it'll sort itself out in the oven. Dust with rye flour, cut a deep cross in the top – go at least halfway through – and bake for 25-30 minutes until risen and golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. It's best eaten within 24 hours, though it will freeze well, too.


The rye does not have as distinct a taste as I was expecting but it's a nice-tasting, brown soda bread.

Nerf-day cake for Jamie (age 12)

I just got back from two weeks in Scotland. My cousin Jamie turned 12 while I was there (he's a millenium baby so it's easy to keep track of his age). For his birthday he and his dad (my uncle) had planned a party involving five or six of J's mates and a Nerf gun battle. Nerf guns are colourful plastic guns of all descriptions that fire three inch long orange foam pellets. They are very popular with little boys - Jamie has been into them for years. As he told it, this was his last big Nerf gun blow-out - he felt like he was getting too old for them.

I had plans to go out to East Lothian and hang out with all my sisters and their babies on the day of the party, but got thinking about what to get Jamie for his birthday and then thought of making a cake. I'm not often there on his birthday and I had plenty of time since I was on holiday (I love baking when I have time for it): it seemed like it could be fun for me and save his parents some bother. I don't know much about what 12 year old boys like, but started with the Nerf theme and the idea of a making a target popped up. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be coming together into a great idea, so I went with it.

I used my Grandma's kitchen and she helped me with the recipes, so these are not vegan since I a) wasn't making it for anyone veg, and b) didn't want to freak Grandma out with a weird recipe - the cake plan was already pretty far out for her...

Preparatory sketches

For the cake (Grandma's basic Victoria sponge recipe, plus red):
2 eggs
4 oz self raising flour
4 oz caster sugar
4 oz margarine / soft butter
1 tsp baking powder
2-3 tsp red food colouring

For the buttercream filling (Grandma's recipe):
1 tbsp water
1/2 oz caster sugar
1/2 oz butter
4 oz icing sugar

For decorating / finishing:
~10 glace cherries, chopped
~4 tbsp plum jam, warmed and strained
1 packet white ready to roll fondant icing
1-2 tsp red food colouring
1 Nerf gun pellet
red food writing pen

First, make the cake. Heat the oven to 170C. Grease two 8 in sandwich cake tins and line the bases with paper. Sieve the flour and baking powder together into a bowl, then add all the other ingredients and beat until well combined - either by hand or in a food processor (I don't have a food processor at home but for this I got to use Grandma's - it's a Kenwood dating from the 50s and it is amazing. One day perhaps I'll have one of my own, it feels like a 50s housewifely dream using it). Divide the mixture (which should be intensely red) evenly between the two prepared tins and bake for 20 min / until they are starting to come away from the sides of the tins. Let sit for 10 min or so then turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool.

While the cakes are cooking, make the buttercream filling. Put the butter, water and caster sugar in a small pan and heat until the sugar is dissolved and the butter melted. Sieve the icing sugar into a bowl. Add the liquid mix to the icing sugar and beat together til smooth. Allow to come to room temperature, when it should be a good spreading consistency.

When the cakes are cool, trim any rough bits from the edges and peel off the base papers. Spread half the buttercream on one side of one of the cakes, and the other half on one side of the other cake.  Set one icing-up on a plate and sprinkle the chopped glace cherries over it. Put the other cake icing-down neatly on top.

Take a lump of rolling icing about the size of a clementine and put it aside in a small bowl. Roll out the remaining rolling icing (about 5/6 of the packet) on a piece of clingfilm until big enough to cover the top and sides of the cake in one sheet (take care to avoid red cake crumbs or food colouring when doing this). Brush the top and sides of the cake with the warmed, sieved plum jam. Carefully lift the sheet of icing and place it, centred, on top of the cake. Gently smooth it down over the sides of the cake and neatly trim any excess.

Take the set aside icing and fold in red food colouring until it is bright red (about 1 tsp) - I used a spoon to knead and fold until the colour was evenly distributed to try and avoid staining my hands. Roll or squish out a circle approx. 2 in diameter and press this in place in the middle of the cake (might have been a good idea to stick it on with the sieved jam). Roll out a sausage and flatten it to make a ring about 1 cm across that will fit around the perimeter of the cake. Place this on in the same way as the central circle. Make a second ring that fits in the middle, equidistant between the outer ring and the inner circle, and place this as well. The cake should now look very much like a target.

Press the end of the Nerf pellet into the icing in a few positions to make small circular indentations. Use these as guides to carefully cut circles out of the white icing, exposing the red cake underneath. Cut a hole in the icing in the centre of the central circle (bullseye!) just big enough to fit the Nerf pellet and then push the (clean) Nerf pellet into the hole, business end first, so it is sticking out of the cake at a jaunty angle.

Use the writing pen (I saw this in a cake shop down the road for Grandma's and was curious to try it - it looks just like a felt tip pen but writes with food colouring) to write a message along one of the white strips in the target... the Nerf-day pun occurred to me and I couldn't let it go, especially since the party wasn't on Jamie's actual birthday (a couple of days later on a weekday), so the cake really was for his 'Nerf-day'.

Finally, we used balls of the left-over rolling icing to stick the candles in and pressed them in place on the plate around the edges of the cake.


I was pretty pleased with this. It was a fun project, and fun to combine Grandma's recipes with my ideas and things I thought 12 year old boys would be into. The rolling icing was really fun and easy to work with (and appears to be vegan). It gives a  resilient finish - butter icing is so sensitive to accidental touching or changes in temperature, this stuff is robust. I was worried all the way through that the red would come out pink, which is one reason why I used so much food colouring. I'm glad I did, as it was quite high-impact, but using another colour would also work, and perhaps you could then use less. I really liked Grandma's buttercream recipe: a clever way to make a lighter buttercream / avoid having to use loads of butter.

As soon as J saw it he took photos and told me he was posting it on Instagram, which I figured was probably as good a thumbs-up as I could hope for (although he then proceeded to explain to me what Instagram is, I guess he sees me as hopelessly old and uncool even if he did think the cake was cool). Since I missed the party I didn't see the reaction, but Simon (J's dad / my uncle) said the red cake inside was a great surprise and it was all gone by the time I got back so I'll have to assume it looked and tasted good when cut!

Squash wedges with cumin, cinnamon, sage and garlic

Couldn't resist the prettiest pile of Orange Acorn and Delicata (variegated orange / cream / green) squashes being put out at Trader Joes when I went there on Friday (ahem supposedly looking for chocolates to decorate a cake ahem). I thought I should be so over squash by now, but no...

Decided to roast them right away, had been thinking about the combination of cumin seeds and ground cinnamon, and wanted to use up some sage.

2 medium squashes (one Delicata, one Orange Acorn), cut in half and deseeded (keep the seeds to toast)
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp finely chopped sage leaves
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
salt+pepper

Heat the oven to 400F. Chop the squash halves into wedges, leaving the skin on each. Toss the wedges with the rest of the ingredients, then tip onto a lightly oiled baking tin. Roast for 25-30 min, until soft to a poke with a fork. You can turn them midway through to avoid browning the bottom side too much.


These were yum.  Ate them with wild+brown rice mix and bean puree. Definitely fun to leave the skin on when the skin is so pretty. I kind of like the texture contrast it brings too. Liked both squash varieties: no closer to settling on my favourite kind of squash. Think the trick may just be to find nice fresh / ripe ones.

Kale salad with radish and spelt

All my salads lately have involved honey-mustard dressing (+raisins+flaked almonds). It's simple and tasty and storecupboard-friendly, and if you ask me it goes with almost anything. I guess it's kind of a go-to comfort food for me: I've been somewhat distracted by preparing for my trip to Scotland. This time it was kale's turn. I've been experimenting a bit with kale salads, this time I thought I'd try it super simple. The kale and the daikon radish both came in last week's bumper CSA. The kale was listed as 'White Russian Kale', which suggests, as S pointed out, that it might taste like kahlua, vodka and cream. Not so, but it was quite nice anyway: the lobed, non-crinkly variety.

1 bunch kale, washed, leafy parts only (stripped from main stems and torn into manageable pieces)
1 cup whole spelt berries (or wheat berries)
2 tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tsp honey
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
salt+pepper
1/4 of a medium sized daikon radish, peeled and thinly sliced
small handful of golden raisins (would have liked cranberries but I was out)
small handful of flaked toasted almonds

Put the spelt on to cook (should take ~ 20 min). Prepare the kale and let it drain. Mix the dressing (mustard through salt+pepper) in a serving bowl. Add the kale and mix thoroughly, using hands to make sure all the kale is coated. Let it sit for a while to soften - at least half an hour. When ready to serve add the sliced radish, raisins and almonds and toss. Serve over the cooked spelt (or you could mix it all together before serving).


I liked this. I think this kale variety is perhaps a little better for salads than the regular crinkly stuff - with less surface area it seems to soften easier / be a bit less fibrous. Perhaps they just happened to be younger leaves, I don't know. Anyway, it definitely filled a comfort food gap for a late supper after aerials, and the crunchy peppery radish/irony green kale/sweet dried fruit/toasty crisp almonds were a pretty complete combination.

Vanilla bean and coconut oil biscuits

I bought a few things I'd had trouble finding locally from a spice purveying website the other day: celery seeds, cream of tartar... I was really happy with my purchase - the items were reasonably priced, there was a good selection, I could find everything I wanted, delivery was free, the package arrived quickly... I also gave in to temptation and bought some vanilla pods while I was there - I came across them while browsing and I've never cooked with them / always meant to.

Then they sat in my spice cupboard for a month or so. I was beginning to wonder if I might still never get around to cooking with them. Until I saw this recipe and it suggested a perfect opportunity.

(makes about 14 large, thin biscuits)

3 oz sugar
1/4 tsp ground sea salt
1 whole vanilla bean
4 oz coconut oil
5 oz flour (mixture of plain and wholemeal)
1/4 tsp baking powder

Snip the hard tips off the vanilla bean and discard. Snip the rest into inch long pieces and put into a spice blender. Add some of the sugar and blend until the bean is broken up completely into tiny pieces. Transfer the vanilla bean / sugar mixture to a mixing bowl along with the rest of the sugar. Add the coconut oil and beat until smooth. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and mix to make a smooth dough.

Take balls of the dough (about 2 inch diameter spheres) and roll / squash out between two pieces of baking paper until about 5 mm thick. Transfer to a baking tray lined with baking paper. When the tray is full, move it to the fridge and chill for about half an hour. The biscuits will firm up in the fridge and become much easier to move around. While they are chilling, heat the oven to 340F. When ready, move the tray(s) of rolled out biscuits to the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, until lightly browned around the edges. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the trays for 5-10 minutes before carefully moving to a cooling rack. They are quite fragile so be careful.


These biscuits don't look like much (misshapen and brownish), but they have an intense taste: the coconut and vanilla are sweet and familiar / exotic both at once. And they're crumbly and flaky and melt-in-the-mouth. They aren't very pretty and a bit lacking in substance for my taste, so I don't know if they will become staples, but they are definitely lovely. And it was really easy to use that vanilla bean - I am inspired to think of something exciting to make with my second one. Perhaps in icing?

Apple, treacle and caraway muffins

As soon as I saw this recipe I was dying to make it: apple, treacle and caraway seeds are three of my favourite things right now, it sounded like a wonderful combination, and Dan Lepard's recipes are almost always gorgeous. I had all the ingredients (more or less) at home (including eggs as I am picking up Alvin's CSA while he is in Borneo), so all I needed was time.

(makes 12)

120ml veg oil (or 50ml oil plus 100g melted butter)
50g treacle (used blackstrap molasses)
175g soft brown sugar, any sort
3 medium eggs (used 2 large ones plus a bit of linseed-water mix)
3 tsp vanilla essence
3 tsp caraway seeds
150g plain flour
150g spelt or rye flour (used wholemeal as had no spelt)
2 tsp baking powder
3 small apples, peeled, cored and diced
Flaked almonds, to finish

Heat the oven to 190C/375F/GM5. Beat the oil, treacle and sugar until smooth, then beat in the eggs one at a time, until evenly mixed though. Add the vanilla and caraway, mix well, then add the flours and baking powder, and stir just to combine. Fold in the apples, divide the mixture between lined muffin cups, filling them almost to the top, and scatter almonds on top. Bake for 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from the oven, and carefully lift the muffins from the tray and on to a rack, so they don't sweat as they cool.


These were every bit as great as I hoped. The caraway, vanilla and treacle all seemed like quite large quantities of quite strongly flavoured ingredients, but together they meld and make each other brilliant, backing up the soft, sweet apple perfectly. Somehow seasonal, with the treacle and apple and very British caraway - perhaps I'll make them next Bonfire Night.

Baked acorn squash with dukkah

Leafing through old recipes cut out from newspapers and so forth, from the days before this blog existed, when I still lived in the UK, bought newspapers (haven't found an American one I love like the Guardian weekend), and cut recipes out of them. Some little nostalgia. Found this recipe. Liked the sound of it. Never tried it. Three squashes in the pantry. Now is time.

1 tbsp coriander seeds
1/2 tbsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
2 tbsp sesame seeds
handful hazelnuts, roughly chopped
small handful mint leaves, finely shredded
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 medium-large acorn squash (or butternut)
3 tbsp olive oil

Heat the oven to 350F. Toast the cumin and coriander in a small pan just until fragrant, then grind until broken but not powdered. Put the sesame seeds into the spice pan and warm until just golden. Toast the hazelnuts and chop them. Mix mint, spices, seeds and nuts together in a small bowl: this is 'dukka'. Peel and deseed the squash, cut into chunks or wedges. Tip into a bowl with the olive oil and 3-4 tbsp of the dukka and toss, then pour into a roasting tin and bake for ~40 min, until soft. Sprinkle over more dukka to serve.


The dukkah is pretty tasty.  There may be an argument for not bothering to add it to the squash before roasting, since the dukkah is all nicely toasted already and it might be better to get the roast on and make the dukkah while the squash is in the oven. Am out of love with acorn squash: I thought they were my favourite but my last few acorns have seemed insipid in colour and taste beside their butternut peers. Their seeds are better, but the seeds are only ever really an added bonus / afterthought.

Potato salad

As a child, the only way I'd eat boiled potatoes was in potato salad, which had to be with salad cream and chives (or finely chopped onion at a push) - no other way.  As an adult, salad cream seems disgusting.  I guess this is a grown-up version.

~20 new potatoes (we used fingerlings, other small boiling potatoes would also be fine), scrubbed and boiled with the skin on until just cooked, left to cool (can store in the fridge for several days)
1 tbsp chives, chopped (parsley also good, or both)
2 tbsp capers, drained and chopped (sundried tomatoes in oil also good - if using replace the olive oil with the tomato oil)
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
2 tsp honey
1 tbsp lemon juice (juice of 1/2 a lemon)
2 tbsp olive oil
salt+pepper

Chop the cold, cooked potatoes into chunky, evenly sized pieces.  Mix the remaining ingredients in the bottom of a medium sized bowl and check for tastiness.  Add the potatoes, toss and eat.


This is a classic. I've made many slight variations but the honey-lemon-mustard-olive oil dressing with herbs and nuggets of strongly-flavoured caper or tomato is really yummy, and makes for an instant storecupboard / fridge salad out of a tub of leftover boiled potatoes.

Red cabbage salad

Previous red cabbage experiments having led me to believe that raw in salad is by far the best way to eat red cabbage, more salad was definitely in order for this one.  Dried fruit, nuts, honey and mustard were calling out to be added, so I obliged.

1/2 a red cabbage, outer leaves and thick stem in the middle removed and the rest finely shredded
1 tbsp chives, chopped
1 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped
1 tsp nigella seeds
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
1 tbsp golden raisins
1 tbsp flaked toasted almonds
2 tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tsp honey
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp cider vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
salt+pepper

Put the shredded cabbage, herbs and seeds in a serving bowl.  In a small bowl, mix the remaining (dressing) ingredients and check for tastiness.  Pour the dressing over the cabbage, toss and eat.


S said he didn't think he liked red cabbage but then he really liked this, so that seems like a recommendation.  Lots of space for adaptation, as ever with this kind of recipe. 

Physalis and lemon jam

We've been harvesting these wonderful tomato relatives (ground cherries aka physalis) from the community garden all summer. They have such an exciting, sweet-sharp, distinctive taste. The final harvest was on Sunday - we'd already taken the plants down, and I picked up the fruit remaining on the ground (one of the great things about these is that they come individually wrapped, so they can lay on the ground a little while without even getting dirty - always wonder if the name comes somehow from this). Since they were mostly a bit underripe and the green tomato jam I made the other day was surprisingly successful, I thought of reapplying the same recipe to make physalis jam. It was a small quantity of fruit for jam, but still just about worth bothering with.

1 lb physalis (weight of fruits only, the husky lantern parts having been removed)
12.8 oz sugar
juice and zest of 1/2 a lemon

Slice the physalis and mix with sugar in a large bowl. Cover and leave for 24 hours or overnight. Move to a large pan and add the lemon zest and juice. Simmer for about an hour / until reduced and the jam passes the setting point test. Let cool for 5-10 minutes and then spoon or pour into sterilised jars.


Perhaps less lemon would have worked just as well - the lemon taste is quite strong: not unpleasant, but perhaps overpowering the delicate physalis a little. And the set is quite firm: another argument for less lemon.  Edit: actually the set is firm but good - I was initially worried it was too sticky but it is fine... And actually I think the physalis taste is sharp enough to power through the lemon.  This jam is yummy - quite similar to the green tomato one, but with a sweeter, more intense tang.

This year's parkin (+Bonfire Night)

Shane's photo

It's nearly Bonfire Night, and I suddenly realised what that meant as I walked home from work in the wild winds on Monday...  Time to make parkin! I made one last year which was quite successful, this time I decided to go with an old recipe I cut out of the newspaper years ago, and which dates from even longer ago: October 1907, apparently. Interestingly, it is eggless. Other differences include addition of nutmeg, lemon zest and mixed peel. Parkin is generally recommended to be aged - up to a month is good I think - to allow the oats to soak up the treacle and syrup and so forth. I was not that organised, but this one got 5 days.

225g plain flour
3½ tsp ground ginger
¾ tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
a pinch of salt
125g medium oatmeal (used steel cut oats)
100g unsalted butter, softened (used fake butter)
125g light soft brown sugar
zest of ½ lemon
100g treacle (used a mixture of blackstrap molasses and carob molasses)
75g golden syrup
50ml milk (used fake milk)
50g mixed peel, finely chopped

Grease a deep, 20cm square cake tin and line the base with baking paper. Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan-assisted)/350F/gas mark 4. Sift the flour, spices, soda and salt into a bowl, then stir in the oatmeal. In another bowl beat the butter, sugar and zest until light and fluffy. Add the treacle and syrup, beat again until creamy and smooth, then add the milk and the dry ingredients, and beat quickly until smooth once more. Fold in the mixed peel, then spoon the mixture into the tin. Cover the top with foil, bake for 40 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for a further 20 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.


It came out well enough: the citrus was interesting and good. But a little dry: perhaps I left it in the oven a little too long? It was very brick-like, as ever with my parkins. We celebrated last night, with a bonfire and lots of sparklers at Andrea's, and people seemed to like it.

Halloween pumpkin: from owl to curry (with banana)

I can never bring myself to choose between carving a pumpkin and eating it. Thus, last night after I biked home a long way round to pass through the trick or treating heaven (hell?) that is Brook St (featuring skeleton ship's captain at the wheel and circling red-eyed bats), in a fit of Halloween slasherdom, I butchered the owl I carved out of a tiny pumpkin last week at Mariah's, and it became curry.

The recipe I noted down from Meghan's pumpkin recipe book, which she brought in to inspire us ahead of our pumpkin-themed happy hour.

3 tbsp veg oil
1 small onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp ground coriander seed
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 small pumpkin (1 1/4 lb), seeds, peel and guts removed, cut into cubes
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 dried red chillies
1 1/4 cups veg stock
1 3/4 cups cooked chickpeas
1 large, underripe banana
1 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp tamarind paste

Heat 2 tbsp oil, add the onion, garlic and ginger and fry for ~5 min, until the onion is browned. Add the ground spices and stir-fry for a minute or two more, until fragrant. Add tomatoes, chillies and stock to the pan and simmer for 15 min.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining 1 tbsp oil in a frying pan, add the cubed pumpkin and fry for 5 min, until lightly browned. Add the pumpkin to the tomato mixture with the chickpeas, cover and cook for 20 min.

Peel the banana, slice thickly and stir in to the pan 5 min before the end. Lastly, add salt, sugar and tamarind, taste for seasoning and add the fresh coriander before serving.


I followed the recipe loosely: I figured it was that kind of recipe.  I wasn't sure what type the pumpkin was, but in curry the taste of the pumpkin is not all that important so I figured it would be fine either way.  It came out very pretty and equally tasty: a good balance of sweet/spicy/savoury/hot.  It was slightly fierier than I intended, due to my new jar of 'red pepper flakes' in fact being chilli pepper, but it was just about on the good side still.  We ate it with cumin rice.  And E Nesbit's ghost stories on Radio 4.

Squash, chanterelle and sage flatbread / pizza

My lab hosted a pumpkin themed happy hour on Friday, and it was out of control. We ran a pumpkin carving competition, delivering pumpkins to each lab / group (17 in total) a week in advance and then fanning a wildfire of competing posters from different groups advertising why you should vote for them (in homage to the upcoming election). Then on Friday we made a feast of pumpkin based food, decorated the department in orange and black, ran the ballots for the competition and awarded the trophies (gold-painted gourds on pedestals). The food making was epic: I hacked up 11 butternut squashes with a crappy knife and I've got a blister to prove it. Everything we made contained something squash: pumpkin bruschetta (baguette slices with a smear of baked squash, plus some combination of goat cheese, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, fresh coriander and seasoning), 'squashamole' (dip made with mashed baked squash, lime juice, chopped red onion, ground cumin, chopped coriander and seasoning) with hexagonal multigrain chips (Paul's special request / invention), roasted butternut squash and tofu chunks with rosemary / sage, wild and brown rice mix with toasted pumpkin seeds and fresh coriander, roasted squash seeds with cajun spice, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin-white chocolate muffins. We bought the baguettes and the pumpkin pies but we made pretty much everything else from scratch.

So, I couldn't imagine eating another squash after all that, what with the blister and the overexposure. But a lazy Sunday rolled around and S popped up wondering what was for lunch, and I remembered an idea I had of using baked squash instead of tomato sauce on pizza... And also that I had a tub of baked squash left over from happy hour in the fridge, plus a batch of bread mix, the last of the chanterelles and some rosemary and sage from Andrea's yard - seemed like an irresistible plan!

2 orange-sized chunks of dough
1-2 cups of baked squash (peel removed)
1-2 tbsp olive oil
salt+pepper
1 small onion, finely sliced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
8 black salty olives, pits removed, torn into quarters
3/4 cup chanterelles, checked for imperfections and torn into large pieces (sliced chestnut mushrooms would be a decent out-of-season substitute)
1 tsp chopped sage leaves
1 tsp chopped rosemary leaves
semolina / corn meal for lining the baking trays
(optional cheese - S is still eating his way through the cheese mountain his mum left behind, so he put some brie and parmesan on his bits)

Heat the oven to 450F. Roll or stretch out the dough as thin as you can - try to get down to ~2 mm thick.  Move the pizza base to a baking tray pre-sprinkled with semolina or coarse corn meal (this quantity is for 2 pizzas).

Mash the baked squash with olive oil, salt and pepper. Smear the bases with the squash mixture, making an uneven covering 2-3 mm thick. Scatter the onion, garlic, olives, chanterelles and herbs over the top, and season / drizzle a wee drop more olive oil over the top.

Put the baking trays in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes / until the crust is crisp and starting to brown around the edges and the toppings are cooked. Remove, let cool for a minute and then eat.


This was a very successful experiment all round. It was a lovely, rich, colourful pizza topping combination that tasted great, and the base came out really crisp. The high speed bread mix worked great as pizza base (which is brilliant news - that stuff is super useful); lining the trays with semolina / cornmeal was much better than using flour; and the squash made a wonderful, very seasonal sauce (less wet than tomato although still moist, perhaps this contributed to the crispness).

Beetroot seed cake

I'd bookmarked this cake a while back, then ended up with some eggs (beautiful multi-coloured ones, thanks to D+K's tempura making), and was daydreaming about making it when along came Alvin with a bag of beetroot among this week's bounty.

'Frankenstorm' Sandy is due to hit us tomorrow, in fact today already felt wild and stormy - the winds are rising and squalling, and showers are whipping our apartment building - so I am getting apprehensive about what tomorrow might have in store for us. I've moved all my plants down off the roof and filled all the large plastic bottles I can find with water. S was concerned we might run out of food: this cake should, as well as satisfying my love of beetroot and nagging urge to follow that recipe, keep us going in the event of mishap.

For the cake:
butter or oil, for greasing
225g/8oz self-raising flour (used plain, plus 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp salt)
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
(1/2 tsp ground ginger)
180ml/6¼fl oz sunflower oil (used veg oil)
225g/8oz light muscovado sugar (used a mixture of brown and granulated)
3 eggs, separated (used 2 large eggs plus 1 tbsp linseed / 2.5 tbsp hot water mix)
150g/5oz raw beetroot, peeled
juice of half a lemon
75g/3oz sultanas or raisins (used golden raisins)
75g/3oz mixed seeds (such as sunflower, pumpkin and linseed) (used golden linseed, pumpkin seed and poppy seeds)

For the icing:
8 tablespoons icing sugar
 a little lemon juice or orange blossom water
poppy seeds, to garnish

Heat the oven at 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease a rectangular loaf tin (20cm x 9cm x 7cm/8in x 4in x 3in), and line the base with baking paper.

Mix together with a fork the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, cinnamon and ginger.

In a separate bowl, beat the oil and sugar until well combined, then mix in the linseed mixture, followed by the egg yolks one by one. Grate the beetroot coarsely and fold it into the egg mixture, then add the lemon juice, sultanas / raisins and the assorted seeds, and mix. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and mix until just combined.

Beat the egg whites until light and almost stiff. Fold gently but thoroughly into the cake mixture, using a large metal spoon (a wooden one will knock the air out). Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 50-55 minutes, covering the top with a piece of foil after thirty minutes. Test with a skewer for doneness. The cake should be moist inside but not sticky. Leave the cake to settle for a good twenty minutes before turning out of its tin onto a wire cooling rack.

To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and stir in enough lemon juice or orange blossom water to achieve a consistency where the icing will run over the top of the cake and drizzle slowly down the sides (about three teaspoonfuls), stirring to remove any lumps. Drizzle it over the cake and scatter with the poppy seeds. Leave to set before eating.


It's quite lovely: bejewelled with deep pink beetroot, golden raisins, emerald pumpkin seeds... They taste great together too - layers of sweet earthiness. Only thing is, it is a little greasy (another time try less oil / a little more linseed mixture, beetroot, lemon or milk). During the assembly process I kept thinking it was going wrong as it often seemed unfamiliar in texture and consistency, but it came out ok. Might be good with orange zest+juice instead of the lemon juice. I iced half and left the rest un-iced (it makes a big loaf cake, a half quantity would be loads for just us in non emergency situations), both were good. I usually wouldn't bother icing a cake like this but fancied trying the orange blossom water. I've generally found orange blossom water perfumey and hard to work with, but here it actually works out being quite pleasant.

Roasted turnips with turnip greens

Another delivery from Alvin, another vegetable I rarely buy. This time a bunch of cute little white turnips, doing their best to disguise themselves as ping pong balls to escape being cooked. I didn't have much idea what to do with them, so decided to roast the turnips and saute the greens, with plenty of garlic and rosemary, then see how it all went together.

1 bunch of small white turnips, greens and roots separated
5 cloves garlic
olive oil
water
salt and pepper
small bunch of rosemary
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Heat oven to 350F. Wash the roots, top and tail them, chop into wedges (or leave whole, depending on the size), and arrange in a baking dish.  Add 3 whole garlic cloves (unpeeled) and 4 sprigs of rosemary. Pour over about 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp water, season and put in the oven for 30-40 minutes until the turnips are soft and savoury.

Meanwhile, wash and roughly chop the greens, and peel and chop the remaining garlic. Heat 1/2 tbsp olive oil in a frying pan and saute the garlic until just starting to brown. Add the greens, cover, and saute until wilted. Season.

When the turnip roots are done, remove them from the oven and add the balsamic vinegar to the pan, tossing to deglaze. Remove the skins from the garlic and any twiggy bits of the rosemary. Allow to cool, then toss together with the greens, checking for seasoning and oil / vinegar.


The greens were surprisingly good: very tender and tasty, slightly peppery. The turnip roots I may have overcooked a little, as I mixed them with some beetroot that might have needed a bit longer. Came out tasting fine, just a bit squishy. I tasted some turnip root raw and it was very good - kohlrabi-like crunch and juiciness and colour - would perhaps have made a good salad, lightly pickled / with coriander and chilli.

Chanterelles and hedgehog mushrooms

We went to the woods at the weekend, and found so so many mushrooms. Starting with some slimy boletes as soon as we left the car park, and moving on to add chanterelle after chanterelle as soon as we left the path, followed by what we think were two varieties of hedgehog mushroom (wish I had a better picture of these).

By the time we got back to the car we had a weighty bag of hedgehogs, plus two bulging bags of delicate chanterelles. D had collected and eaten both from the same spot before, so we had little doubt about their identification and awesomeness. This haul outstrips any other mushroom hunting trip I ever made, many times over.

We mainly consulted this book, which is wonderful. The author is incredibly knowledgeable and it's bursting with personality and tips about every aspect of mushroom hunting, preparation, growing and eating. All the recommended mushroom varieties are given scores at the back for how good they are when prepared to eat in different ways. Hedgehogs scored highly for tempura, so we decided to burden K with the responsibility of her heritage and put her in charge of hedgehog tempura, while D+S concentrated on cleaning mushrooms with a paintbrush and I sauteed some chanterelles (they scored high in the saute category). We also set up the dehydrator to dry out some of both kinds of mushrooms for future use.


Sauteed chanterelles

1 tbsp olive oil
4 large handfuls fresh chanterelles, larger ones torn in two
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp thyme leaves
1 tbsp finely chopped curly parsley
knob of butter
slug of (German) white wine
salt+pepper

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and add the garlic. Cook until starting to brown then add in the cleaned chanterelles. Saute over a medium heat until they release their liquid, then continue to saute until they absorb it again. Add the herbs and cook for a few more minutes. Finally, add the butter and white wine and cook until melted / evaporated, and taste for seasoning.

We ate them with gnocchi, they were yummy - quite delicate and fragrant (almost fruity?).  These chanterelles are beautiful mushrooms, and really held their shape and texture despite looking so frail.

For second batch (yes, we had that many), I sauteed an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic in olive oil until well softened and golden brown, then added a mixture of hedgehogs and chanterelles, cooked until the liquid reabsorbed, then added some chopped chives and seasoning, and a knob of butter to deglaze the pan. And ate it with spaetzle (which go wonderfully well with sauteed mushrooms).  I think I liked this latter version better.


Powdered dried chanterelles / hedgehog mushrooms

The book recommended powdering both kinds of mushroom when dry as they apparently do not reconstitute well (I'd imagine they just go a bit floppy and slimy).

Fill the dehydrator with cleaned mushrooms and set to 110-125C. Leave overnight or for approx 4 hours, until the mushrooms are completely dried. The chanterelles dried out quite easily and evenly as they are quite thin and delicate all over; the hedgehogs are thicker and did not dry quite as quickly / evenly. For powdering, I think it is important that the mushrooms are very thoroughly dried. When completely dry, transfer the mushrooms to a clean spice/coffee grinder and whizz to a powder. Try not to inhale it when you take the lid off. The full dehydrator (5 trays) of chanterelles made 250ml of powder.

The smell of the powder is incredible - intense essence of mushroom - and both chanterelle and hedgehog powder smelled quite similar.  But I haven't figured out the best way to store or cook with it yet... Edit: see here for recipes so far.


Note: I think the chanterelles were mostly Craterellus tubaeformis, the winter chanterelle (fits with being late in the season), although I think we also found some Cantharellus ignicolor (flame-coloured chanterelle; think the ones in the photo above are these) and Cantharellus cinnabarinus (bright red ones). The hedgehog mushrooms were Hydnum repandum and/or Hydnum umbilicatum.

Fennel, apple and walnut salad

Another autumn salad, using more of the apples we picked the other day, plus some fennel from A's CSA and walnuts, a lovely trinity of ingredients.

1 bulb fennel, tough parts removed, good parts finely sliced
1 medium apple, washed, cored and thinly sliced
~6 walnuts, crumbled
1/2 spring onion, finely chopped
~1 tbsp fronds from the fennel, finely chopped
~1 tbsp curly parsley, finely chopped
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
salt+pepper

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and toss together. Taste and check for seasoning and acidity.


Very fresh, clean tastes - great to eat with something greasy. Noticeably this kept surprisingly well - the apples stayed white and crispy. The only thing I might leave out would be the fennel fronds, other than them it would still be perfect after several days in the fridge.

Butternut squash and chickpea salad with tahini sauce

Having accumulated 4 squashes (3 butternut and 1 acorn) I guess I was kind of on the lookout for new things to do with squash. I stumbled across this recipe, and it seemed to be combining a bunch of things I like / I know go well with squash, so I thought I'd give it a shot. As I assembled the ingredients and started to make it, I realised it is actually quite familiar - it's similar to the roasted squash and chickpeas I've made and liked before, with a tahini sauce that is another variation on a favourite quick sauce. Still, it's a new construction and with those credentials I'm bound to like it...

For salad:
1 medium butternut squash (about 2 to 2 ½ lb), peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 ½-inch pieces
1 medium garlic clove, finely chopped
½ tsp ground allspice (or sumac)
2 tbsp olive oil
salt
equivalent of 1 tin cooked, defrosted chickpeas
¼ of a medium red onion, finely chopped
¼ cup coarsely chopped fresh coriander

For sauce:
1 medium garlic clove, finely minced with a pinch of salt
3 ½ tbsp lemon juice (approx. juice of 1 lemon)
3 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp olive oil

Heat the oven to 425F. In a large bowl, combine the butternut squash, garlic, allspice, olive oil, and a good pinch or two of salt. Toss until the squash pieces are evenly coated. Turn them out onto a baking sheet, and bake for 25 to 45 minutes, or until soft. Remove from the oven and cool.

Meanwhile, make the tahini sauce. In a small bowl, mix together the garlic and lemon juice. Add the tahini, and mix to blend. Add the water and olive oil, mix well, and taste for seasoning.

To assemble the salad, combine the squash, chickpeas, onion, and coriander in a mixing bowl. Either toss with tahini sauce, or serve with tahini sauce on the side.


Perhaps a little more onion than I would have liked, but pretty colours and tasty.  Nothing very new but nonetheless nice, autumn-turning-colder comfort food.

Apples are everywhere: apple and ginger jam

This weekend was fall fun from beginning to end: we looked at fireworks (Bonfire Night is coming up); went for a short hike up Mt Kearsarge on a beautifully crisp, clear day scattered with red and yellow leaves; went apple picking and bought lots of squashes at Carter Hill Orchard; ate apple pie...  And we had a Harvest Festival at the garden, during which we cranked out a lot of fresh apple juice using a wonderful vintage press and ate amazing soup containing foraged maitake mushrooms and acorns. I took a few of the extra, slightly bruised apples to make some apple jam.

I used this recipe before, when I had a constant (in Autumn) supply of cooking apples from the trees around the allotments in Norwich - our plot was right at the bottom of the space, and as I walked along the track to it I always found windfalls scattered on the road and figured they were fair game - they were only going to last until the next car came along if I didn't pick them up. The jam is surprisingly good: apples are too mild in taste (and lacking in texture) for a jam by themselves, but the addition of lemon and ginger makes a wonderful, golden, spicy jam in a relatively short time.

(makes ~6 regular sized jars)

3 lb apples
600ml water
2 lemons
2 one inch pieces of fresh root ginger
1 heaped tsp ground ginger
3 lb sugar

Peel, core and chop the apples. Put the apple pieces into a large pan with the water. Put the peel and cores into a muslin bag and tie up tightly, then add the bag to the pan. Grate the lemon zest and squeeze the lemons, then add the zest and juice to the pan. Peel the fresh ginger and grate one piece into the pan. Chop the other piece of fresh ginger into two and put in the pan. Add the ground ginger. Simmer until the apples are softened. Fish out the bag and squeeze as much juice out of it as you can. Add the sugar and boil hard until setting point is reached. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, then fish out the two large chunks of ginger and spoon the jam into sterilised jars.

(see Methods page for notes on set point, jar sterilisation and jar filling)


The original recipe calls for crystallised ginger, of which I had none so decided to try using fresh ginger instead. It came out pretty good: you don't get the chunks of gingeriness you would with the crystallised ginger but the jam is still nice and gingery - each mouthful is different, depending whether you get a bit of lemon zest or more ginger or just apple. The set is firm but perfect and it is a great spreading jam as the apples are pretty much completely smoothed out.

I actually had twice this quantity of apples, but decided they would be too much jam so stewed the rest to make an apple puree / apple sauce. The apples were all eating apples - I have never yet found real cookers here - so all I did was peel, core and chop, then heat in a covered saucepan until they collapsed, without adding anything, and the sauce/puree came out amazingly sweet.

Raisin-oat-sunflower biscuits (gluten-free)

I haven't done any gluten-free baking for a while, but the oats we buy regularly from Trader Joe's are gluten free. On the back of the package is a recipe for gluten-free oat cookies that has been tempting me for a while. The opportunity presented itself with the harvest festival at the garden this afternoon (featuring my two regular GF test eaters). So here goes...

(I made half the quantity given below and it gave 15 large cookies)

1/4 cup fake butter (or 4 tbsp oil)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 5 1/2 tbsp boiling water
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup sunflower seed butter (or peanut butter)
3 cups GF oats
6 oz raisins (or mixed dried fruit)
1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Heat oven to 350F. Cream sugars and butter/oil in a large bowl. Add linseed mixture, vanilla, bicarb and cinnamon and mix well. Add sunflower seed butter and mix. Stir in oats, raisins and sunflower seeds. Place teaspoons of the batter on a lightly greased baking sheet about 2 inches apart (they will spread a little as they bake). Bake 10-12 minutes until light brown around the edges. Let sit for 5-10 minutes to cool a bit so they firm up a little and are easier to handle, then transfer the still-warm biscuits (careful, they are quite soft and bendy at this stage) to a cooling rack. They will become firm and crunchy as they cool.


I liked these a lot. Sweet and crunchy and tasty and you would never guess they were gluten free. They don't even have any flour in them at all! Also, a good way to eat up the sunflower seed butter, which I thought I would love straight up but weirdly like much less than peanut butter - it works perfectly in these. Big thumbs up from both A and H, and from lots of other non-gluten-free diet people too... and they were all eaten, which is always a good sign.

Note: I don't really like using marg if I can help it, and it seemed a bit superfluous in this recipe, so the second time I made these I used 4 tbsp of safflower oil and it worked just fine. Actually the batter was a lot less sticky than the first time I made them, although whether that was something to do with ambient temperature or a different sunflower butter brand or what I don't know. Anyway, they came out great again: definitely a hit. I am still wondering if you could skip out the oil/marg altogether and just use a little more nut/seed butter: will perhaps try this next time.

Pumpkin chocolate cake-cookies

I've been getting through about three squashes a week recently, pumpkin/squash are great stuff. I'd rarely baked with pumpkin before I moved here, but I am fully converted now.

These are partly for the harvest festival we are having at the garden today, and partly for our friend G, whose birthday is on Thursday and we spent the day with yesterday, and who fortuitously loves pumpkin anything (and also dislikes chocolate, I remembered too late - but it was OK, turns out he likes chocolate chips).

I wanted to make pumpkin cookies, and considered a bunch of recipes before settling on this one. I think my original vision was something a bit more cookie-ish - these are quite cake-y - but they taste great so it's OK.

(makes about two dozen large cookies)

2 cups plain flour
1 1/3 cups oats
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 2/3 cups sugar (mixture of brown sugar and granulated)
2/3 cup veg oil
2 tbsp carob molasses
1 cup cooked pureed pumpkin (about 1 smallish acorn squash)
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp ground linseed
1/2 cup plain chocolate chunks

Heat oven to 350F. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets.

Mix together flour, oats, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spices.

In a separate bowl, mix together sugars, oil, molasses, pumpkin, vanilla and linseed. Add dry ingredients to wet in 3 batches, folding to combine. Fold in the chocolate chunks.

Drop by tablespoons onto greased baking sheets. They don’t spread very much so they can be placed only an inch apart. Flatten the tops of the cookies with a fork or with your fingers. Bake for 16 minutes at 350F.

Remove from oven and move to a wire rack to cool. These taste best when they’ve had some time to cool and set. They taste even better the next day.


Definitely a hit with everyone who ate them, although I think the GF ones I made at the same time went down better!