The Blue Velvet Dr. Who Tardis Cake

I can take no credit for this cake recipe at all, as it is an original by Lorraine Not Quite Nigella herself.  But I did spiff it up for a recent Dr. Who themed night by turning it into a Tardis cake - well, sort of.  You can see I am not really a cake decorator, but at least it was blue!  Here is the link to her recipe which is well worth making.  

yep definitely blue

I have never had much luck with red velvet cakes in the past, either bought or made so I was really chuffed that this one was so darn delicious - very moist and chocolatey. Thanks Lorraine:=)

whisking cake flour, cocoa powder, bicarb and salt   

melting chocolate and cream together in the microwave   

creaming the butter and sugar then eggs together  

adding blue and black food gel to the buttermilk, vanilla and chocolate  

add this to the batter in 2 lots  

and watch it go a murky, curdled green   

add the flour mix in 3 lots 

Stir gently and pour/spoon into 2 x 20cm lined baking tins.  Bake for an hour and 5 @ 130C or until your skewer comes out clean. Mine took closer to 1 hour and 15-20 minutes.  (Remember that slow oven of mine whose door doesn't shut and that doesn't have much rubber strip left around the edges?)

I know folks, it looks like doggy doo or puréed kelp   

out of the oven looking quite...indescribable   

Lorraine suggests putting them in the freezer once they are completely cold if you wish to decorate them on the same day.  Yep I put mine in the freezer for a while.   It makes it so much easier to slice them in half thru their little middles.  You will end up with 4 thin, soft layers of scrumptious chocolate cake.


Now make the icing which is cream cheese and butter beaten together till smooth. Sifted icing sugar goes in next.  Vanilla, lemon juice and more colouring is sploshed in. Yay, this time I actually got it fairly blue, not dead dog green.

cream cheese and butter ready for beating 

see, it is blue:=) - after the icing sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and colouring are in 

thick and blue, glorious blue

grab your palette knife and smooth away  

my Tardis impression

After making and decorating this cake, and making Tardis/Dalek chocolates and setting up the school hall for this event, I was shattered and just thought, to heck with it!  This is as far as I go, Tardis-wise.  And it went down a treat.

Me and Mr P. in our Dr. Who gear 

look at that moist gooey cake 

Sorry about the cruddy, night-time shot.  All that matters is the delicious, moist texture and taste.  I have forgiven the red velvet cake for being a sod to make and eat, and now will worship the blue velvet cake forever:=)  

Pied Chocolate Bark

Remember how Mr P. and I went foraging for wild macadamias a while back? Remember how I said I would do something healthy with them like make nut milk?  Well folks, that didn't happen and this is not that recipe.  Instead, I made this double whammy pied chocolate bark.  That's pied as in black and white, like a butcherbird or a zebra, not your classic Aussie meat pie.  

I've made versions of this bark before, but this time I wanted to use the nuts that have been staring at me from their bowl for way too long.  Alas, this was not to be.  My dears, they were as hard as granite and just as impenetrable. Everyone in the family had a go with hammers and lumps of wood; we even resorted to The Bonk - that super strong nutcracker made especially for macadamias, but to no avail.  They resisted all efforts to reveal their delicious nutty selves.    

not even The Bonk could crack these babies  

Never one to let a slight setback stop me making a dish, I rushed off to the local grocer's to buy some of the little devils.  Guess what!  I found our local store in the midst of renos, and the nut bar (is that what you call it?) moved to another spot.  When I finally found it, the macadamia tub was empty. Aarrgghh!  I ran around the shelves and found a packet of macadamia halves.  Sorry to tell you these are not the little wild beauties we foraged, but even so, this still tastes fantastic.   

gather your nuts...on a cold and frosty morning etc. 

    


ingredients:


125g. macadamia halves, or nuts that you chop yourself :=)

200g. white chocolate

200g. dark (or milk) chocolate

a small handful (about 20g.) of semi-dried sour cherries or dried cranberries - you want something tart to combat the sweetness

a scattering of cacao nibs (optional)

a few pinches of sea salt flakes, or to taste - I like a lot!


Method:


First roast your nuts - @ 170C for 10-12 minutes

Melt the white chocolate in the microwave for 70 seconds

Give it a good stir and let it rest for a couple of minutes

On a tray lined with baking paper, spread out the chocolate to the edges of the tray

Before it sets, throw on the nuts, the sour cherries, the nibs and the sea salt flakes

Let that sit for an hour or 2 till the chocolate goes hard

Then melt the dark chocolate in a Pyrex jug for 77 seconds or thereabouts

Cool it for a minute then pour it over the white chocolate slab

Let it set then break up into delicious shards

spread the chocolate over the paper

throw on the nuts 

scatter the cherries, salt and nibs 

melted dark choc about to be poured over the slab of white choc   

dark choc poured over  

arrr me hearties!  grab that cutlass and chop:=)  

my nutty doodle 

Rose & Edward Espresso - Review

It has been busy times chez Pickings, so I am only just catching up with friends and chores this week.  Oops, no - friends don't equal chores:=)  You know what I mean, folks.  So, Miss ID. and I trundled down to the corner café only to find it closed.  New plan?  Café a wee bit further down the road that we hadn't been to before. 

can't miss it can you? 

Rose and Edward has been there for a while, so it was well and truly time to suss it out. It is surprisingly large inside, a bit Tardis-like.  There is an undercover area plus a small courtyard out the back.  It has been said before that mm mm I have rather a loud voice, so when we entered, heads turned.  The charming lady staff member brought us water and menus tout suite, and even though it is counter service, she took our coffee orders at the same time.  

pretty $3.90

more pretty $3.90

The coffee is Elixir which is a roasting house close by (in fact, we can smell it from our house), and I think is one of the best coffee brands in town.  We both enjoyed our drinks, and Miss ID loved her pretty fern art.

'The Favourite" - $18

This is a fabulous dish of chunky parmesan hash cake, smoked salmon, asparagus, poached egg and house made hollandaise sauce. And it's gluten free if you're worried about that sort of thing.  This really hit the spot!  The asparagus was nice and crunchy (in a good way), the egg only a tiny bit overcooked (sorry guys) and everything fresh and filling.  The sauce was light and flavourful; always a plus when house made too.

another 'The Favourite" - kind of  - $21

Miss ID decided to customise her lunch, which the male staff member happily accommodated.  I asked him not to spit in her plate, and told him I would never bring her again.  Joking folks! just joking!, but it did take her a while to choose the other ingredients.  In the end, she had halloumi and mushrooms as well as salmon.  From the happy murmurs, I know she loved it.  Plus she told me so.  I ate 2 of the mushies (couldn't resist) and they were very delicious - meaty and buttery.

this is so me  

We would both happily go back again to try more of the dishes.  I love the sound of the Nutella and raspberry porridge, and the chicken breast wrap.  Oh and we spotted a well-known face down the back - Mr C. Newman (former Premier) himself, doing a bit of business.

yep here are the hours and address    

The Picking Verdict:  a relaxing place with great service and a congenial atmosphere.  Have a great coffee and a tasty meal here any day of the week.



110 Maygar St., Windsor Q.
Ph:  0432 536 772

my arty shot of the ceiling 

 

Spritzen - German Puff Cakes

Spritzen means to squirt in German, and often spritz cookies are made from a dough that is "squirted" through a cookie press to make nice shapes.  Let me tell you, these spritzen are nothing like a cookie.  In fact it is hard to say what they are.  Mine turned out like very sweet, very eggy puddings that you had to eat out of the cup with a spoon. Other students have said it is like Yorkshire pudding, and the photo on the course sheet looks like gorgeous muffins!

puff cakes or puddings?

Clearly it depends on the quantities of egg, sugar and flour that you use.  That being the big problem, in that the recipe tells you next to nothing about quantities and method. Before the advent of the cookbooks that we are used to, you had to be a bloody good cook/mind-reader.

So here it is - my weird and wonderful version of Spritzen, a late Georgian recipe that would have been made and served to King George III and his family.  The Georges I and II were born in Germany, while Georges III and IV were native-born to the UK. Clearly they were not in a hurry to integrate!  And they liked their German tucker, which must have made them feel at home in their new land.


Serves 4:


ingredients:

2 small eggs

2 tbs cornflour or plain flour

228 mls cream or milk

56g. melted butter

2 tbs caster sugar

a pinch of sea salt

1/2 doz. turns of the vanilla bean grinder or 1/2 tsp of extract

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

icing/powdered sugar to cast over the tops


Method:


Break 2 eggs into a small mixing bowl

Beat well with electric hand beaters till very fluffy - or, as our course sheet tells us - beat them to within an inch of their life

Add the flour and beat to incorporate

Pour in the cream or milk, and the melted butter

Whisk again with the beaters

Add the sugar, the salt and the spices

Beat again till it is fluffy and well mixed

Take 4 tea cups and grease them lightly with butter

Pour in the batter, leaving a bit of room for expansion

Place them on a baking tray

Bake at 190C for about 20 minutes - it may take a little more depending on your oven

Sprinkle generous amounts of icing sugar over them while warm

Eat with a spoon if they won't come out of the cups:=)

ingredients - gleaming in the sun 

frothing up the eggs

beating in the flour

whisking in the cream, butter, sugar and spices   

ready for baking in the cups  

about to ladle the batter into the cups   

ready for the oven

almost finished

baked and ready to eat

Well, who knows what these should really be like?  The original recipe doesn't tell you to butter the cups, so perhaps that made a difference to the end result.  There is no sugar used in the original batter either, but I felt I wanted a sweet morsel rather than a very plain one.  We don't know the size of the spoon for the flour, so maybe extra would make them more cake-like.  And using plain flour would perhaps have given them a slightly stronger texture. 


Anyway I served them to Mr P. and sis-in-law after dinner, and they went down a treat. Another fun experiment in my History of Royal Food course.  We all seem to be interpreting the recipes differently, so it is fun to discuss the varying results.  And of course, there is a bit of conversion of weights and measures going on.  You have to remember that these are old pints, not new pints; that UK pints are different to US pints and so on.  Phew!



Original recipe Mary Cole. 
The Lady’s Complete Guide, 1788 

Mix two spoonfuls of fine flour with two eggs well beat, half a pint of cream or milk and two ounces of melted butter; stir it all well together, and add a little salt and nutmeg. Put them in tea-cups, or little deep tin moulds, half full, and bake them a quarter of an hour in a quick oven; but let it be hot enough to colour them and top and bottom. Turn them into a dish, and strew powder sugar over them.

my puff cake in a cup doodle

Soup Barley

For some reason, they are calling this recipe soup barley in our History of Royal Food course, rather than barley soup.  Anyway it is a thick and hearty dish, just right for King George.  Poor old George III had a bad tummy, so often ate a simple soup at the start of his dinner.  Then of course another 8 dishes came to the table! 

I love barley; it brings back childhood memories of mum's Sunday night soups.  And as barley swells so much when it is cooked, it must have been a boon to a busy mum trying to feed 4 hungry children.

I was a bit worried that this soup would not be very flavourful as it has so few ingredients but it was in fact delicious.  You need to use a really good stock (plus I threw in a couple of sneaky ingredients).

ingredients

ingredients:


1.9L of good quality stock - I used chicken but use your fave

225g. pearl barley

30g. butter

2 tbs olive oil

2 brown onions, shredded or finely chopped

190g. mushrooms

30g. sultanas or raisins

2 pinches dried thyme leaves

1 pinch dried chilli flakes

pepper to taste



Method:


Pour the cold stock into a large saucepan

Add the barley and give it a stir

Bring to the boil then let it gently boil away till it has reduced to about half the original liquid - this will take from 45 mins. to 1 hour

Meanwhile, fry the onions in the olive oil and butter till translucent

Add the mushrooms to the onions and sauté them till lightly cooked

Now tip the veg. into the barley soup and stir them in

Don't forget to add the sultanas

Throw in the thyme and chilli 

Season with pepper (salt probably won't be necessary)

Add a dash of cream (optional)


Notes:  I used some of the leftover stock I had from making the capon with oranges so it was a very tasty base for this soup

tipping the barley into the cold stock  

mushrooms chopped  

frying the onions 

caramelising the onions and sautéing the mushies 

Well actually, I had a bit of an accident with the mushies.  I was trying to research if the Georgians would have used butter or oil for frying and forgot to check them - and yes they were burning! So I thought what the heck, I'll just keep on sautéing:=)  Don't worry, I changed the frypan 'cos onion was stuck like a wad of chewing gum to the pan. 

in go the sultanas

add the herbs and seasoning at the end 

looks aren't everything! (including my manky nighttime snap)   

Not the best looking soup around, but it tasted great.  The original soup doesn't have chilli or mushrooms or thyme.  And oddly it says to just throw the shredded onion in at the end; no mention of cooking it at all.  It mentions a handful of raisins going in (I prefer sultanas); my handful was 30g. but if you had a big blokey hand, who knows?  And yes it ended up quite thick like a porridge.  Add more stock at the end if you wish.



Original recipe 
New and Easy Method of Cookery, Elizabeth Cleland, 1755 
Boil a hough of beef in eight pints of water, and a pound of barley, on a slow fire; let it boil to four pints; then put in onions, pepper, salt, and raisins if you like them, or you may put in greens and leeks.

my brown onion doodle