David in the kitchen.

I might just have found my new favourite cake

‘I might just have found my new favourite cake’ is a blog post title I’ve been toying with for a while. Until now I’ve resisted it on the grounds that I’m always finding new favourites. It might be something I’ve baked myself, it could be something delicious winking at me suggestively on a coffeeshop counter, telling me how well it would go with a black Americano. Or it could be a picture in a cookbook, leaving me with no choice but to add the book to my library and the recipe to my ‘must bake’ list. Whichever way you look at it I’m a bit of a tart when it comes to cakes. Free and easy with my emotions and always falling in love. Which probably means this will become an ongoing series rather than a one off favourite cake post.

My latest crush is a lemon, raspberry and courgette cake. Baked last weekend when my partners son came to see us, it ticked all the boxes for the celebratory cake I’d been tasked with making. We ate the final slice yesterday and I’m already looking for an excuse to make another.

Putting courgette, or zucchini as you might know it, in a bake was a new thing for me but I will definitely be trying it in others now. In principle there’s no reason you couldn’t substitute it into any carrot cake recipes you may have. The one thing you must do though is squeeze as much of the water out of the vegetable as you can after you’ve grated it. You’ll be amazed how much is in there and if you don’t get it out you could be left with a very wet cake batter that will struggle to bake.

Although this recipe does make quite a large cake it’s a very light and delicate sponge which I don’t think you’ll have any difficulties finishing.

Ingredients

250g softened butter
1 courgette, grated
200g caster sugar
1 tbsp lemon thyme leaves
1 large lemon, grated zest and juice
200g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 large eggs
150g mascarpone cheese
2 tbsp milk or cream
100g lemon or raspberry curd *
Raspberries, enough to decorate the top of the cake
Icing sugar

*I used some raspberry curd which I already had in the fridge. If you want to increase the lemon flavour of the cake this Ruby Tandoh recipe makes wonderful lemon curd

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4. Grease and line 2 20cm cake tins.
Grate the courgette. The best was to get the water out is to wrap the grated courgette in a clean tea towel and squeeze it. Don’t worry of it’s still a little wet but try to get as much water out as you can.
Cream the butter, sugar, lemon thyme and lemon zest until light and fluffy.
Sieve the flour and baking powder together
Beat the eggs into the butter and sugar mix one at a time. With each egg add a tbsp of the flour.
Once all of the eggs are in add the rest of the flour and mix again. Then add the lemon juice followed by the grated courgette.
Divide the mixture between the two prepared tins and bake for 25 to 30 minutes.
Mix the mascarpone with the icing sugar. Then add the milk or cream to loosen the mixture.
Spread the mascarpone mix on one of the sponges. Top this with some fruit curd and then place the other sponge on top.
Decorate the top of the cake with raspberries and icing sugar.

Giorgina finally got to feed her son.

After three months my partner finally got to see her son this weekend. He lives in London and during lockdown all communications have been via phone calls or the occasional zoom session his mother managed to persuade him to join. For a long time those were the only options they had but now that lockdown easing has started it was time for them to get together again. There was an understandable reluctance to travel by train at the moment but once they’d found how easy it was to hire a car for a couple of days the visit was on.

The planning which went into it was yet another example of just how strange the last few months have made everyday life. I watched his mother getting more excited by the day on one hand, but more concerned by the day on the other as she worried about social distancing and how difficult was it going to be not to give her son a hug as he walked through the door. Then there was his 89 year old grandmother to think of. She’s currently living with us and given her relatively frail health we’ve had to be extra cautious these last few moths to make sure she’s being shielded from any virus risks. Were we going to to eat outside, would it be indoors with every window thrown open. The worrying showed no sign of abating, but then we got to food planning and suddenly there was calm.

It was fascinating to watch. I’ve become so used to being the one thinking about food all the time that I’d probably forgotten others in the house have the urge to cook as well. There were lists everywhere as two days worth of meals and the necessary shopping expedition for supplies were planned. Tasks were allocated, Giorgina opted to cook the main meals, her choices were slow roast lamb for Saturday and salmon on Sunday. My contributions were going to be dessert & a cake. Given free range and knowing it was going to be a celebratory weekend I opted to make a Pavlova with Pimm’s roasted strawberries and a lemon, raspberry and courgette cake. The Pavlova is a recent bake I’ve been desperately looking for an excuse to do again. The cake is a new bake and the combination of the three flavours listed along with some lemon thyme in there as well was wonderful. We’ve got a couple of slices left to enjoy this evening and I’ll share the recipe with you in my next post.

Even Giorgina’s mother found herself roped in to help. Its very rare to find her in the kitchen, but her task was to make an egg and bacon flan for her grandson to take home.

In the end the weekend was a great success and you won’t be surprised to hear that large parts of it were spent sat around the dining table. Giorgina finally got to feed her son again and he went home so well fed that something tell me it will be a lot sooner than three months when we next see him.

If you’re worried abut the social distancing we eventually opted for indoors with the windows thrown open.

It’s been 105 days

It was one hundred days ago yesterday that the UK went into lockdown, which must make it somewhere in the region of one hundred and five days since I was last in a restaurant or coffeeshop.

I’d gone to Cambridge for the day to see my dad and we managed to fit in coffee at Espresso Library and lunch at The Ivy while I was there. Over lunch we talked about the persistent rumours of an imminent UK lockdown but even at that late stage it still felt slightly fanciful and not really likely to happen. Looking back I can’t quite decide if we were just being naive or if it was the wine with lunch that clouded our judgement. Either way it did happen and the doors of coffeeshops and restaurants closed.

Since then the urge to get back out into the open and to start indulging again has been a lockdown constant, but now that the opportunity to actually do it could be just around the corner I really find myself torn. Here in England the government has given the green light for pubs, coffeeshops and restaurants to reopen from this Saturday and while all logic says I should want to be first in the queue there’s a whole range of conflicting feelings holding me back.

As much as I’m desperate to end this hermit like existence it still feels like a very big step to venture into Norwich city centre for the first time in three months and to start going into some of the quite compact spaces that are my favourite haunts. I appreciate that suddenly we’re being told one metre social distancing is going be fine as of July 4th, but it’s going to make everyone feel very close after the two metres we’ve all grown used to.

Then there’s the question of will I actually enjoy it. I know everyone is going to be super welcoming when you go in. How could they not be after being closed for so long. But I keep imagining places full of stilted and paranoid customers, all feeling they are there because they should be rather than actually wanting to be. All thinking ‘yes we want to support you, but please don’t feel offended if we get out of here rather quickly’.

I know it won’t be long until the lure of a coffee & pastry gets too strong to resist. But for now the government can bang on about this Saturday being ‘Independence Day’ as much as it likes. I think I’ll stay where I am.

That’s me with my nose pressed up against the window. Glad that there’s something going on inside, just not quite ready to join in yet.

Grandma so loved to bake

One of the great benefits of the creative writing course I’m taking is the opportunity to produce work in different styles and formats to those I would normally use.

In a recent session we looked at writing a villanelle poem. If you’re anything like me a villanelle will be a completely new concept so I’ll briefly try to explain how it works. It consists of six stanzas, the first five being made up of three lines with the sixth containing four. The first and third lines of the first stanza must rhyme and these are then used alternately as the final lines of stanzas two to five. The first line of stanzas two to five should end with a word that rhymes with the final word of line three. The final stanza finishes with lines one and three from the first and the opening line must rhyme with these. One last twist is that the second line in all stanzas needs to rhyme.

If that’s left you baffled hopefully my villanelle below will help to explain how it works.

Grandma so loved to bake.

Feeding others, sharing her food.

To this day I still taste her cake.

From the moment that she came awake.

It’s the kitchen where I see her stood.

Grandma so loved to bake.

One of life’s givers, never take.

Always the gentlest of mood.

To this day I still taste her cake.

Some memories can make you ache.

These fill me with gratitude.

Grandma so loved to bake.

She always knew just what to make.

To her grandson it all tasted good.

To this day I still taste her cake.

I bake now, following her wake.

Trying to make things taste the way she would.

Grandma so loved to bake.

To this day I still taste her cake.

The idea to write about my Grandma came from a longer piece that I’m working on concerning childhood memories and I’ll share it with you in a later post. The photo is a rather glamorous shot of his mother in her younger days that my dad has on his wall.

Pavlova with Pimm’s roasted strawberries.

Every weekend needs a treat and at the moment probably more so than ever. We may be slowly coming out of lockdown isolation, slowly starting to socialise again, but each day can still feel the same with little to highlight one from another. An indulgent treat at least sets the weekend apart. It’s an excuse to stop worrying about the world and to just look after yourself for a few moments. To switch off, take a bit of ‘me’ time and remember that these two days are supposed to be different.. Last weekend I discovered the joys of pavlova with Pimm’s roasted strawberries and there’s every chance it could become a very regular indulgence in this house.

It helped that we had a bottle of Pimm’s at the back of the cupboard, left over from last summer. It’s surprising what you can find if you hunt around.

Initially I did meet a bit of resistance when I said I was going to make it. My partner is adamant we’ve been eating too much sweet stuff during lockdown and the theory is that I’m supposed to be a bit more health conscious in my baking picks at the moment. However once I’d reminded her she should have been going to Wimbledon for the tennis this week and that strawberries, cream & a glass of Pimm’s would have been an integral part of the experience she gave in. It probably helped that the same day she’d received a letter saying the tickets she should have had this year can be held over to next. It was good news as she’s been applying for years and this was going to be her first Wimbledon visit. What it does mean is that I will have to look for a different excuse if I make one of these next summer.

The recipe makes a smallish pavlova which cuts to six slices. If you’d like something more substantial just double everything if you make it.

Ingredients

Meringue

2 eggs
100g caster sugar
pinch of salt

Pimm’s fruit

250g strawberries
25ml Pimm’s
Zest of 1 lemon
Small bunch of mint

Cream

100ml double cream
1tsp vanilla extract

Method

Heat the oven to gas mark 2
Separate the eggs. Put the yolks to one side as you will not be using them in this recipe.
In a clean bowl whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks. Add the sugar and salt a tablespoon at a time. Whisk between additions. Once it’s all been added whisk for about another 5 minutes until you have a very smooth texture.
Line a baking sheet and spoon the mixture into the centre. Spread it out into a circle and try to keep the edges slightly raised. Once it’s cooked the raised edges help to keep the cream and fruit in place. Don’t spread it too thin, otherwise the meringue may crack when you move it after baking.
Bake the meringue for an hour. It should be slightly golden on top when it is done.
Put the meringue somewhere to cool and turn the oven up to gas mark 6.
Toss the strawberries in the Pimm’s, lemon zest and mint. Spread them on a baking tray and roast for 20 minutes until the strawberries have caramelised and softened. Set them aside to cool.
Whip the cream with the vanilla and a little of the liquid from the roasted strawberries.
Once everything is cool put the cream on the meringue, add the strawberries on top and serve.

If you’re anything like me you’ll be left smiling and wondering how soon you can make another one.

A few chinks of light

If I hear one more person say ‘this is the new normal’ I swear I’m going to scream, or at least walk off with a petulant flounce. Given the way things change on a daily basis and how the UK is coming out of lockdown in such a seemingly ad-hoc and random manner I don’t see how anyone can know what normal is now or for any point in the foreseeable future. One day at a time was an acceptable mantra in the early days of lockdown but after the eighty sixth time of asking it’s starting to feel a little ragged. The pining for a coffeeshop visit just gets stronger by the day.

I realise we have to be careful but it does feel to me as if the importance of opening up places where people who’ve been indoors for so long can socialise with others is being overlooked. In recent days newspapers and TV have been carrying pictures of restaurant and cafe life starting to resume in France. I fear it’s going to be some time yet before you’d get the same pictures from the UK.

It’s not all doom and gloom though as there are a few chinks of light starting to happen. Now people can mix more outside of the home we’re finally going to see my dad on Friday. We’ve been calling each other regularly but this will be the first time we’ve met up in nearly three month’s. I wrote in a previous post about how well he was coping in lockdown and how supportive his neighbours have been. I still love the fact that when they asked him if he wanted any supplies fetching in the first two items on his list were a bottle of red wine and some dates. It will be good to finally get to see him and it also gives me an excuse to bake tomorrow as I’ll make sure to take him a few treats when we go.

Another good sign is that my partners son is visiting soon. He lives in central London and has been stuck pretty much on his own for the last few months after his house mates decided to go home just before lockdown started. There have been regular Zoom calls throughout but I know his mother is desperately looking forward to having him home for a few days.

On the food front there was a noticeable first for me this week when I finally got to bake with fresh yeast. I’ve always used dried yeast for my bread baking until now but it’s become as scarce as hens teeth in the shops at the moment. I do have a small amount left but when I saw a local baker was offering the fresh version via their online shop it was too good an opportunity to miss. They also delivered me some malted flour, another first for me, and the two combined made a wonderfully soft and delicious loaf. Having never used fresh yeast before I needed to do some homework to make sure the dough was going to rise. The general consensus seemed to be fresh had to be added to the recipe at twice the weight stipulated for dried and that certainly worked for me. The picture with this post is the proof.

The weeks other food highlight was a pavlova with fresh cream and Pimm’s roasted strawberries. Believe me it’s every bit as delicious as it sounds and I’ll share the recipe in my next post. Get ready for a sugar rush.

I made a Victoria sponge.

I baked a Victoria sponge this weekend. That light and airy cake which somehow seems to symbolise teatime in ways nothing else does. There are so many childhood memories of there always being one of these on the table if we went to spend time with my grandparents. Full of cream and fruit, dusted with icing sugar, the sort of cake where you always hope someone is going to ask if you would like a second slice.

As you might have guessed the cake is named after Queen Victoria, who apparently adopted the new habit of afternoon tea in the mid 1800’s. The Victorians somehow managing to squeeze in yet another meal amongst the copious amounts they were already eating. The sponge cake the Queen was served rapidly became a favourite and one of the first printed recipes referring to it by name was in Mrs Beetons Book of Cookery and Household Management which was published in 1871.

It’s not just the childhood memories that make me such a fan of this cake. There’s also the fact it’s one of the few things I ever got to bake for my mother. It was her 80th birthday and as was so often the way with my mother she was adamant she didn’t want a fuss, but we did manage to persuade her to have a small family gathering. I hadn’t been baking for long at the time but the opportunity to make a cake with ‘Happy Birthday’ iced on top, as she had done for me so many times in the past, was too good to resist. I also knew that I didn’t need to worry too much about sugar or cream levels as mum had a life long sweet tooth. Something I’ve probably inherited from her. That was a few years ago now but it’s still one of my favourite baking memories.

I used Mary Berry’s recipe for mum’s cake and it’s the same one I used this weekend. In principle a Victory sponge is quite a simple bake but there are a few things, I’ve highlighted them below, which I believe make Mary’s recipe extra special. If you follow her tips you will have a beautifully light cake.

Ingredients

180g unsalted butter – must be at room temperature
180g caster sugar
180g self raising flour
3 eggs
0.75tsp vanilla extract
1tbsp warm water

Method

Heat the oven to gas mark 4. Grease and line the bottom of 2 20cm cake tins
Put the soft butter in a mixing bowl or electric mixer. Beat the butter until it is very creamy. It needs to be the consistency of mayonnaise.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula then beat in the sugar, a couple of tablespoons at a time. After this scrape down the sides of the bowl again.
Put the eggs and vanilla into a small jug or bowl and mix together. Gradually add to the butter mixture a tablespoon at a time. To avoid the mixture splitting add a tablespoon of the measured flour with each of the last two additions of egg.
Sift the rest of the flour into the mixture. Start to gently fold it in with a spatula. After the 2nd or 3rd fold add the tablespoon of warn water to the mixture. Continue folding until everything is combined.
Split the mixture between the two tins and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. The cakes should be a light golden brown and springy to the touch when they are ready.
Leave the cakes in the tins for just a couple of minutes after they come out of the oven before turning them onto a rack to cool.

The traditional Victoria sponge is then sandwiched together with fruit, whipped cream and jam in the middle. The top of the cake dusted with icing sugar. If you’re like me and have cream and fruit left over then forget tradition and put some on top as well.

A stay at home food traveller.

When lockdown started I rather naively hoped that one of the benefits was going to be much more time to write and as a result lots more things to post on here. Well how wrong was I.

Obviously the time has been there, how couldn’t it be when you’re not leaving home, but somehow the inspiration just hasn’t. I’ve sat down at the screen a few times in recent weeks with some jumbled thoughts and ideas in my head but every time the page has remained defiantly blank and as a result I posted fewer times in May than any month since I started this blog last summer.

I can’t make up my mind if it’s the distractions of these strange and worrying times which has caused the block or a lack of so many of the stimuli that normally get my juices flowing. A world without coffeeshops, restaurants, deli’s and bakeries feels as if it has taken away so much of what I want to write about. Ether way I’m determined this month is going to be more productive.

One of the things that has helped in recent weeks is living vicariously through Dave Chang and Phil Rosenthal. If you haven’t seen either of their Netflix shows you’re missing a treat as they are perfect for stuck at home food lovers. Both cover food from a myriad of places and to my mind they are the epitome of mouth watering television. Dave Chang’s show is Ugly Delicious and tends to feature a particular type of cooking each time. It then runs with the theme to show how styles of cooking we may recognise as being country specific are actually woven into the cuisine of many nations. The level of detail and discussion in the show is fascinating and always leaves me wanting to learn more. It’s so much better than the standard recipe led format of so much food TV. Phil Rosenthal’s show is Somebody feed Phil and can best be summed up as an indulgent food trip. Each show is set in a different destination where Phil and that days travelling companion spend their time wandering from one food place to another. I defy anyone to watch an episode and not end up feeling envious and ravenous.

If this isn’t enough small screen food for you I’ve also recently watched Stanly Tucci’s film Big Night . Set in an Italian restaurant in 1950’s New Jersey it tells the story of two brothers trying to keep their venture going. The food in the restaurant is wonderful but the clients are few as they pin their hopes on one big night to turn things around. The film is populated with wonderful characters and you can almost taste the kitchen scenes as the big night feast is prepared. You can find this one on Netflix as well.

None of this is ever going to fill the gap of not being able to go out and taste things for yourself but it’s definitely making stay at home food travelling a bit more bearable.

It feels like summer

It feels very much as if summer has come early. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and I’ve got a blind pulled to keep the glare off the screen as I type. It’s left me struggling to make up my mind if the advent of such good weather is a help or a hindrance to coping with the current situation, as somehow it’s managing to both lift my spirits and dampen them at the same time. Encouraging me outdoors while at the same time reminding me of all of the things I can’t do once I’m out there.

There have been the first tentative signs of things moving in the right direction here as an ever increasing number of local independents are offering home delivery and in some cases very careful in store shopping. Yesterday the government announced that some more shops will open during June but a coffeeshop visit is still a long way off. One bright note on this front was discovering that bread-source have a great online service. This is one of my favourite local haunts where I’ve spent many a leisurely hour over coffee, cake and something good to read. If you follow me on twitter you’ll have seen the photographic evidence on many an occasion. I’ve been on their site this afternoon and a selection of treats along with replenishment of my flour supplies will be arriving in a couple of days time. If I can’t get to Bread Source then they can come to me.

One of the positives of the current weather was receiving a request to bake a summer cake at the weekend, in particular a cake that included pineapple. Finding fresh pineapple at the moment may be way out of the question but they did have tinned when I went on my Saturday morning expedition to our local store. With that in place I made pineapple and camomile cake. I based my bake on this Ruby Tandoh recipe and it was gorgeous. Definitely a cake with the look, feel and taste of summer. I had to use tea bags rather than dried flowers but they still managed to infuse the cake with a delicate camomile flavour. The curd was so good I may make a another batch just to have it on toast for breakfast. I will just warn you about one thing though, the recipe makes for a very serious size cake. I halved everything and we still had enough for three people over two days. Although I am sat here now wondering if I shouldn’t have gone for the full thing and given us cake for the next two evenings as well.

Saturday afternoon in Paris

As it’s another Saturday afternoon with not much to do I’ve decided to take myself to The Little Paris Kitchen. In an ideal world it would be a trip to a small, intimate space in Montmartre where a long leisurely lunch is followed by coffee and maybe a glass of Calvados. Unfortunately as the world is far from ideal at the moment it means a browse through one of my all time favourite cookbooks.

Apologies if I’ve told you this tale before but buying Little Paris Kitchen by Rachel Khoo after watching the accompanying show on BBC2 really was a turning point for me. I’d enjoyed and appreciated good food for as long as I can remember but always as a recipient rather than someone who actually got involved and produced it in the kitchen. it was watching Rachel turn simple ingredients into such mouthwatering food that suddenly made me think ‘I’d like to try’. So I did , I made Croque Madame Muffins and I’ve never stopped since. The recipe in the book which I go back to time after time is a savoury loaf filled with sausage, pistachios and prunes. It’s wonderfully versatile and you can play around with the ingredients to your hearts content

As much as I love the food it has to be said that the Paris setting was also a huge attraction. At the time of writing the book Rachel was living in a small Parisian apartment with a quite minuscule kitchen but still managing to produce food for the supper clubs she hosted. When the world finally gets back to some sort of normal and we can invite people into our homes again I’d like to try doing that.

I fell in love with Paris on my first visit, I find it hard to imagine that anyone wouldn’t, and the idea of living there one day is a dream which never goes away. The enjoyment and savouring of good food always feels central to French life in a way quite unlike any other country I’ve visited and in Paris all the more so.

On our first trip we stayed in a small hotel in the Latin Quarter. It was room only and as our French wasn’t very good we were quite nervous when we ventured out for breakfast on the first day, full of the stories we’d been told about supposedly surly Parisians and how they would never make you feel welcome. All it took as was ten minutes in the nearest boulangerie to tell us that our fears were unfounded and that we may just have stumbled into baking heaven. After that we were off and the whole trip became an endless stream of cafes, bistros and bars. If we weren’t eating or drinking we were browsing markets and food shops. Since then Paris has always felt like a place where it’s not the time between meals or cups of coffee that matters, it’s the distance.

At the moment social media is full of people asking others where they would like to go once the lockdowns are over. For me it’s definitely Saturday lunch in Montmartre.