Good Baked Goods

Time flies, as they say. Sorry not to have been blogside for a little while. We took a mini-break to Byron Bay (more on that shortly) and then there were some illness and work dramas thrown into the mix.

With Melbourne's return to cool weather, I have been baking happy these last few days. I started out with Applesauce Snackin' Cake from http://thesouthernladycooks.com/2013/08/28/applesauce-snackin-cake/ which worked out a treat and yesterday I went for Good Plain Buns from the venerable Mrs Beeton (http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/beeton-baking-35.php). Very nice with jam and a cup of tea!

TO MAKE GOOD PLAIN BUNS. 1730. INGREDIENTS.—1 lb. of flour, 6 oz. of good butter, 1/4 lb. of sugar, 1 egg, nearly 1/4 pint of milk, 2 small teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, a few drops of essence of lemon. Mode.—Warm the butter, without oiling it; beat it with a wooden spoon; stir the flour in gradually with the sugar, and mix these ingredients well together. Make the milk lukewarm, beat up with it the yolk of the egg and the essence of lemon, and stir these to the flour, &c. Add the baking-powder, beat the dough well for about 10 minutes, divide it into 24 pieces, put them into buttered tins or cups, and bake in a brisk oven from 20 to 30 minutes. Time.—20 to 30 minutes. Average cost, 1s. Sufficient to make 12 buns. Seasonable at any time.

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/beeton-baking-35.php
Copyright © celtnet

To talk again

I have been missing my grandmother lately. I'm not quite sure exactly why. We live in what was my grandparents' house, so I guess they are never far from my thoughts and also they were the only grandparents I really knew - my mother's parents spent a lot of time ill and passed away when I was very small (my maternal grandfather died before I even arrived).

But I have been thinking lately that perhaps it's because I have changed just a little bit in my interests since Grandma died in 2008. As you know, I am now completely into knitting, sewing and baking - things that she would have loved me to have shown an interest in. She was very accomplished in all of these pursuits and I would love now to talk to her about how she does things - this stitch or that cup of flour. That's not to say that she would have been a patient, sweet-natured teacher! I can still recall being told in no mollycoddling or uncertain terms how to knit when I asked at age ten. But it would just be nice to ask and to talk again.

And so I made this very tasty currant cake yesterday from one of my great-aunt's cookbooks, The Kookaburra Cookery Book. I'm thinking it's 1920s at the latest. With lots of nutmeg, it even tastes old-fashioned, reminding me so much for the flapjacks my grandma made every week, without fail, so that there was always something on hand for visitors who came to tea.

Currant Cake

1 cup butter
Half-cup milk
2 cups caster sugar
4 eggs
3 cups self-raising flour
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
Half-pound currants

Combine. Bake for 45 minutes - 1 hour (keep an eye on it) at 180 degrees celsius.

Winter, Solstice and the Fat Lava Cake

Above: A Fat Lava plate

To celebrate the Winter Solstice last Friday, I made a cake which kind of took on an unusual character...it was a plain cake with a base layer of chocolate icing, then orange icing and then grated dark chocolate on top. As soon as I iced it, I decided it looked like a piece of West German Fat Lava ceramic. I love Fat Lava so this was more than ok by me.

Below: My Fat Lava Winter Solstice cake. Or is it the other way around?

Image from http://mid2mod.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/fat-lava.html

The light is a little yellow in my cake photo but I think this is quite appropriate given the wonderful creamy-yellow hue of the full 'super moon' on the Solstice. Did you see it?

Not my photo! This image is from the Huffington Post.

It has been so cold here lately which has been absolutely perfect for indulging my passion for 'cozy mysteries'. Yes, this is a real genre of writing! Essentially, they are murder-mysteries which happen in cozy locations. I am just finishing off The Lover's Knot by Clare O'Donohue (the crime takes place in a quilt shop) and last week I read Motif for Murder by Laura Childs (the main character runs a scrapbooking shop). So good for sitting in front of the heater! If you're looking for the bleak gore of a Scandinavian 'krimi' forget it, but these are good reads nonetheless and ideal for the crafty amongst us!

Although last night television was completely choked up with news of our current political drama, telly on the whole has been woeful lately - just when we need it most, on cold midwinter nights!! Our answer has been to download some goodies off itunes and we are currently besotted with Hell on Wheels, set in 1870s America. Have you seen it? We polished off Game of Thrones last week but I will say nothing about The Red Wedding...lest I ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

I am loving this song, a great accompaniment to reading a 'cozy' in front of the heater in the evenings. Taken from the Hell on Wheels soundtrack, it is performed by two great Australian singers, Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson.

Enjoy x

Baking Days and Mondays

This weekend just past was the Queen's Birthday weekend here in Australia. The Queen's birthday is actually in April, but we take a day in June to acknowledge it. Go figure.

The weather is rather bleak at present - grey days for the most part, rainy and cold - and as any owners of old houses will know, it is in this sort of weather that your house starts to look, well, how can I put it...crap and depressing. And so it is here. Everything is cold and damp! Things that we overlooked in the summer are now very, very obvious in the cold, grey light of a winter's day. So, while my dear husband wrestled with covering the windows in plastic insulation strips, I...baked! Well, the oven keeps things warm, right?

I found the recipe for the Bayou Buttermilk Biscuits in a great book I am reading at the moment - Motif for Murder by Laura Childs. I love a 'cosy mystery' and Laura Child's books are always good fun. And so...here's how you make Bayou Buttermilk Biscuits (great as a side with soup - I think they're a kind of American scone, really).

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons shortening (I used butter)
1 cup buttermilk

Combine all dry ingredients. Chop in butter until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add buttermilk and mix to form dough. Roll or pat out to a 1/2 inch thickness on a floured surface. Cut into rounds with a glass or a biscuit cutter. Bake at 400 degrees fahrenheit (200 degrees celsius) until golden. Makes between 12-18 (I got 18!)  

And this happy chappie below is 'Paddington Bear's Favourite Marmalade Cake' from Jane Brocket's Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer. Perfect with tea for toasting Her Maj.

Winter Warmers

Taking my cue from Sefarina's lovely Blog Windleben (http://windleben.blogspot.com.au/), here are a couple of my suggestions for cheering and sustaining you during dreary and bleak weather (two degrees this morning...!)

1. Find something to please the eye - and sit it on the windowsill

After seeing some lovely photos of glass collections online, I have just started to collect coloured glass. I have amber glass in the living room on the windowsill and blue glass in the bedroom. It looks so crisp and pretty with the white winter light coming through it, and makes the bleak weather outside the window a little less dull!

2. Bake - preferably something sweet!

I have recently borrowed Jane Brocket's Vintage Cakes (do you know her blog Yarnstorm? - http://www.yarnstorm.blogs.com/) from our great local library. Happy Days! Easy recipes that really turn out well and, as an added bonus, the house becomes nice and warm from the oven and everything ends up smelling delicious! I highly recommend the Parkin Cake and the Genoa...mmmm...

3. Listen to some good music

Music can change how I feel in a moment. I have recently re-discovered Backworld and their mellow sound is just perfect for the quiet, cool days right now...

Good things in Autumn 2

I don't know if I'm the only one who does this but sometimes I buy spices that I have no idea how I'll use, but they just look or sound interesting. So it was with cardamom last week. Like its many predecessors, it was almost doomed to languish in the kitchen cupboard for all eternity. Until I had a hankering to bake now that the weather is a little chillier, and I recalled that cardamom cake is very popular in Scandinavian cooking. I found this recipe online - http://www.jansdotter.com/en/workbook/654 - and it turned out quite well. One tip, be sure to grind up your cardamom pods very fine. Mine were a little large but they certainly gave the cake a good flavour hit.

Out of a jam (sorry!)

Before Christmas I bought a lovely jar of rich plummy-pruney jam. It was lovely but just too much for first thing in the morning, you know? So, rather than throw it out, I remembered something my grandmother used to do. I mixed the jam together with some dried fruit, popped the lot into a pastry case and baked it at about 180 degrees celsius for roughly half an hour. Delish!

And I have been in love with this piece of music this week...



Enjoy x

Safe to bake

Yesterday we finally had a day that was under 30 degrees, so I decided it was safe to turn on the stove and heat the kitchen up a little. I found this truly delicious low-fat fruit tea loaf at the good to know website (http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes). The recipe in full is here -  http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/137822/Fat-free-fruit-tea-loaf - and here are the essentials of it:

Ingredients ~

• 1 Darjeeling tea bag
• 300g (11oz) soft dried fruit such as apricots, prunes or apples
• 175g (6oz) soft brown sugar
• 2 medium eggs, beaten
• 225g (8oz) wholemeal flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp mixed spice

Method ~

1. Grease and base line a 1kg (2¼ lb) loaf tin. Soak the tea bag in 300ml (½ pt) boiling water for 5 mins. Roughly chop the fruit and add to the tea, discarding the tea bag and soak for 2-3 hours.
2. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F, gas mark 4). Mix in the sugar and eggs.
3. Mix together the flour, baking powder and mixed spice and fold into the fruit mixture.
4. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 1½ hours or until firm to touch and a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool slightly before slicing.

I am really pleased with how it turned out (above). Seriously yummy.

Food glorious food

Yummy doings from a fairly chilly weekend. Plain cake with tinned plums on top and soda bread. Both pictured here straight from the oven. Soda bread is very good with cream cheese and avocado on top! It's just like a giant scone, really.

The Polish restaurant on Saturday night was excellent too - potato blintzes, pierogi (Polish dumplings) and goulash, with hawthorn berry vodka to wash it down. Oh my.

What's been emerging from your kitchen lately?

Glimpses

I made a plain cake with tinned pears in it on Friday night to take to dinner with my parents. All the pears sank into the middle of the cake! It tasted fine but I had actually hoped they would perch on top and look pretty like some sort of swish tarte tartin in a French bakery... I tried again on Sunday with tinned peaches and I was quite pleased.

I am reading a lot of Romantic poetry at the moment while researching my novel-in-progress and in doing so I stumbled across the film about John Keats which was made a couple of years ago, Bright Star. I love this scene, with a room full of butterflies. What a lovely notion.



We're having something of an Indian Summer here at the moment. Summer proper really seemed to have died away - I was putting extra blankets on the bed and getting the jumpers out of mothballs - and yet we're now having a spell of temperatures hovering around 30 degrees (celsius).

Weekend Doings

With some cooler temperatures and lots of goodies from the garden, we've ventured back into the kitchen! Yesterday, my DH and I made some apple and tomato chutney. So easy! Taken from my grandma's 1933 New Standard Cookery (with imperial measures) -

6 cooking apples
4 small onions
3 teaspoons salt
3 cupfuls brown sugar
1 green pepper
6 large tomatoes
1 cup raisins
1 quart vinegar
1/4 cup peppercorns, allspice, cloves

Mix finely chopped apples, tomatoes, raisins and green pepper together in saucepan. Add remainder of ingredients and boil steadily for 1-and-a-half hours. Allow to cool. Pour into jars.

We didn't use as much vinegar as is suggested here (we used about 800ml) and we used a red pepper rather than green, so it can be adjusted to your own tastes.

And on Saturday, I made a lemon cake. Using a plain cake recipe from the Net -

2 cups self-raising flower
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
125g butter
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk

Then, if you like, add the grated rind of 1 large lemon and a little bit of lemon juice.

Combine. Bake at 180 degrees celsius for 30 minutes. The icing is just my usual concoction of 1 cup icing sugar and 2 tablespoons boiling water. I then added some lemon juice and this made it nice but very runny!

Some Days are Diamonds

I've had a bit of a funny week. While it started off very well with a great short course at Writers Victoria, the next couple of days were consumed by some considerable professional disappointment. But I am starting to feel better now and a little more 'on track'. This is due to a combination of -

1. When it first happened, swearing quite a lot for a couple of minutes to no-one in particular in the privacy of my own home
2. Calming down and talking things through with my sweet, sweet husband and dear mum
3. Sleeping on it
4. Cleaning up my study so I was not a) surrounded by clutter b) surrounded by stuff to remind me about what had just bombed out
5. Having a little bit of good old-fashioned sulking time while I was on my own (just a little bit, though)
6. Finding stuff to make me laugh
7. Getting stuck into a new work project
8. Making the best bread and butter pudding ever (so good I'm going to make it again for my parents tonight)

What do you do when you've been through one of life's knocks?

Easy Bread and Butter Pudding

6-8 slices bread, crusts removed
3 eggs
3 tablespoons caster sugar
300 ml cream
Apricot jam
Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.
Spread the bread with apricot jam and sprinkle with cinnamon
Cut into triangles and arrange in greased oven-proof dish
Whisk together eggs, sugar and cream
Pour over the bread and bake for 25 minutes

This recipe is from http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/ I used fruit bread instead of plain bread, I didn't cut the crusts off or cut the slices into triangles and apparently any jam is fine (doesn't have to be apricot).

As a character in one of the hilarious You Tube comedy clips I've been watching would say - "So good, right?"

Blogtober Days 15-16 - Pymanalia

Writing a post every day is harder than I imagined!


I found some lovely books on a flying visit to the local library yesterday. Scandinavian Needlecraft by Clare Youngs, which has all sorts of beautiful embroidery projects in it and lots of use of felt, which apparently has been used in Scandinavia as far back as old Norse times. Hopefully I will manage to make something from it, though sometimes I must admit I just like books like this for the pictures! Also, Keepsakes by Frances Hansen. Lots of great old-fashioned recipes but with suitably up-to-date twists to take them out of the stodge zone - curried sausages and boiled fruit loaf are looking good already. Great vintagey style to the book too.

And...I think I may be onto something in my quest to find a writer similar to Barbara Pym. Anita Brookner (that's her in the Nation Portrait Gallery photo above). I saw Hotel du Lac when it was made into a telemovie many years ago (with the Pymmish heroine par excellence Anna Massey) and I read Brookner's Latecomers a couple of months ago. Yesterday I borrowed The Rules of Engagement and it's started out very promisingly indeed. Any other Pym- or Brookner- ites out there who'd care to comment?

Speaking of Barbara Pym, if you are a Pymite (Pymster, Pymmie, Pymian?), have a look at The Barbara Pym Society's webpage - there are lots of really interesting essays there from their annual conferences.

Blogtober Day 10 - Hassle Free

My parents celebrated 42 years of marriage on Saturday so we had dinner with them and I provided some sweet goodness. I know some very sloppy icing skills are on display here but sometimes I just can't resist letting the icing go 'sploosh!' and being the very antithesis of 'cake decorated' cakes with their undoubtedly very skilled but rather artificial little roses and so on. The recipe I went with was really lovely and moist and it was -

1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar

Mix together 1 cup sugar and butter.
Add eggs and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice; mix well.
Add salt, flour, and baking powder to mixture.
Add milk.
Bake at 170°C in a well greased loaf pan for 1 hour, or until golden brown.

[from http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090401215813AAHiS6k]

Yesterday my sweet husband and I went to one of our favoured bushwalking spots - favoured because there are also some very nice lunch options and a great second-hand bookstore not too far away!

I enjoyed watching the bug life going about its business...

And was really struck by the muted greens, yellows, browns and greys of the Australian bush that seem to be about at the moment.





At the bookstore I found The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book by Sharon Rosenberg and Joan Wiener. It was printed in 1971 so the front cover is suitably hippie and there is a definite sprinkling of 'I really dig that'-style comments throughout but I am super keen to start sewing some simple clothes for myself and this book seems to set everything out really simply and clearly. We'll see if it lives up to its claim of being hassle free! Has anyone else read and/or sewed with this book?

What did you while away your hours with this weekend?

PS I couldn't resist posting this very brief clip from the wonderful British comedy Miranda as she notes ways in which she is turning into her mother - one of which is by commenting on a cake's moistness (this is prompted by my own comments above).

Blogtober Day 7-8 - Johnny Cash and Chocolate Cake

Oops! Only seven days into Blogtober and I missed a day. Work got a little bit crazy yesterday and then I remembered that I had volunteered to make the cake for my mother's birthday dinner last night...!! I went with this one - http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/18086/super+easy+chocolate+cake - which was delicious and a big hit.

I loved the movie "Walk the Line" about the American singer Johnny Cash. I've been a fan of Joaquin Phoenix since I saw him in "Gladiator" and, having seen the film, I also became a big fan of Cash's music. It seems to me that his songs (and the covers he chose to sing) remarkably spanned the spectrum from tremendous toe-tapping optimism to real melancholic despair. Here's two great examples of both ends of that span.

Blogtober Day Six - Weekend Happenings

On the weekend, I finally managed to get something done with a lovely little set of vintage swap-cards depicting different types of fruit that I bought at a flea market in Copenhagen. There are also cards of vegetables and nuts in the deck, but I like the fruit ones the best. I had had them just on their own on the kitchen wall, but then thought that framing them would be better.

Discovery! I started knitting with two balls of yarn last night, following a suggestion from the magazine I mentioned last week. You know I am but a baby knitter - I'm sure all you knitters out there have been doing this for ages! But I enjoyed trying out something new.

And so it begins...the first recipe tried from the Australian Women's Weekly Sweet Old-Time Favourites - Caramel Cornflake Chews. They are very like Anzac Biscuits but without the oats. I was going to post the recipe but I got scared after reading the copyright section of the cookbook! These are super yummy, though. Hot out of the oven - gooey in the centre. Oh yes.

How was your weekend?

Blogtober Day 5 - At Home

The fairies are definitely about at the moment. I know this because they have planted a little ring of daisies in our garden!

I have decided to make use of my grandmother's cutlery set. She only used it when my parents and I came for Sunday lunch and every Sunday, after lunch, I was placed in charge of polishing each piece and returning it to the homemade calico pouches they lived in. We certainly won't use it every day but it now has its own drawer in the kitchen as opposed to being bundled up in a bag as it was when I just wasn't quite sure whether I should use it or not. Brings a nice little touch to things, I think, and reminds me of those lovely Sunday lunches. Do you have anything special like that?
I can feel a bake-a-thon coming on...there are so many goodies in the Women's Weekly cookbook that I mentioned yesterday...cinnamon teacake, swiss roll, caramel cornflake chews, melting moments, chester squares... I'll let you know what I chose to make on Monday.

Enjoy your weekend.

Blogtober Day Four - Good Things

The beautiful Pigface plant that I have in a pot out the front is just looking so lovely at the moment.

I had a very fruitful visit to the local op-shop this morning. Two gorgeous vintage tablecloths ~

And a lovely idea for something different to do with garter stitch. I am still very much a novice knitter, so garter stitch is really what I feel most comfortable with at the moment. It can, however, sometimes get a little...dull! So I rather like the idea of this little blanket-stitched heart. It is described as "Shaker-style" too which also got me in - I will never be minimalist enough (or even close) to follow the Shaker style but I love it.

I often have rather a dodgy tum, and strangely enough sweet treats appeal to me during said dodginess (don't worry, I know too much sugar is not such a great idea). So, The Australian Women's Weekly Sweet Old-Time Favourites jumped right out at me at the library this morning.

Ah, Swiss Roll! My grandma made one every single week. This delicious looking example is from http://goodtoknow.co.uk

Sugary goodness

Lots of baking over the weekend. First up, this lovely fudge from Tiny Happy (http://tinyhappy.typepad.com/). So easy.

200-250 g dark chocolate
1/2 tin of condensed milk
2 tsps vanilla extract

Line baking tin with waxed baking paper. Combine chocolate and condensed milk in a double boiler (I used the microwave to melt the chocolate and then added the condensed milk afterwards). Stir continuously. When chocolate is melted, remove from heat and add vanilla extract. Pour into baking tray. Set for 1-2 hours. Cut into squares.

Thanks Melissa at Tiny Happy!


And then I made Elizabethan Fine Cakes. They are surprisingly good. I am always a little sceptical about very old recipes, thinking that things (ingredients, implements) have changed so much, there is not a huge chance of them turning out ok. These have changed my mind. I found them just by googling after having watched The Supersizers Go Elizabethan and feeling that I fancied some Elizabethan sweeties. This recipe is from http://www.seatofmars.com/index.htm

6 ounces of butter (1 and half sticks) at room temperature
Half a cup of sugar
1 egg yolk - beaten
1 and three quarter cups of sifted flour
Half a teaspoon of mace (can be replaced with nutmeg)
A Pinch of ground saffron (can be replaced with tumeric)
Egg white

1) In a bowl cream the butter. Add the sugar and beat until fluffy.
2) Add the egg yolk and beat until thoroughly blended.
3) In another bowl combine sifted flour and spices stirring to distribute evenly.
4) Sift dry ingredients into a bowl containing butter and sugar mixture. Combine by stirring with your hands.
5) Press mixture into a 9 inch square baking pan.
6) Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes or until the cake feels firm when pressed lightly in the center.
8) Cut into squares while the cake is still hot.
9) Cool in pan on wire rack.
Yields 25 small cakes

If you can find what the egg white is used for, let me know. I couldn't! Of course, not all Elizabethan food may be worth revisiting...

Sunshine on a Monday makes me happy

Well, the raspberry cake was a total success - much more moist than the Daffodil cake and tastier too. And who doesn't love a cake that's pink in the middle?

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I have now got the soda bread making down to a fine(ish) art...there was nothing for lunch yesterday so I said I'd make bread. We were eating it an hour later!

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We're having a little bit of sunshine at the moment (though I can see grey clouds gathering from the study window...) and I am celebrating by throwing windows open and listening to stupidly cheerful 80s music. What do you when the sun comes out?