BRUNEL BAKES

I have a little weird extra job at the moment. I am making cakes for the Brunel Museum's cafe. Business has dropped off a bit due to the inclement weather over Christmas and the New Year, but I was called to make 'cakes for 60' by the man that runs it, Robert.

And here they are:

Apparently they went down very well.

So I thought I'd share my recipes for them. The chocolate one is apparently Robert's favourite.

Double Chocolate Sandwich Cake

So you need:

2 x 21cm sandwich tins generously buttered and lined

Then you need:

225g unsalted butter that's very soft

225g caster sugar

4 large eggs

225g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

4tbsp cocoa powder

50g dark chocolate, grated

And for the filling:

200g full fat (of course) cream cheese

100ml double cream

4 tbsp cocoa powder

4 tbsp icing sugar

And white and dark chocolate to decorate.

So start by creaming your butter and sugar together. Add the eggs one at a time, with a spoonful of flour between each to help the mixture bind. Fold in the rest of the flour and add the chocolate and cocoa powder. Easy as pie. Divide the mixture between the two sandwich tins and pop into a preheated (to 180degrees) oven for about 25 minutes. The cakes will be coming away from the edges of the tin slightly and should spring back up when you touch them.Remove them from the oven and allow to cool in the tin on a wire rack for about 10 minutes before turning out.

Allow to cool completely before adding the topping and filling.

To make the filling... whip the double cream to soft peak and fold it into the cream cheese along with the icing sugar and cocoa powder. Beat all this together to loosen the mixture slightly. Taste to see if anymore icing sugar or cocoa is needed. Just add more to taste.

Spread two thirds of the mixture onto the top of one sponge and place the other on top. Top this one with the rest of the remaining mixture and grate a combination of white and dark chocolate on the top. Blimey. Chocolate fest.

And here's the finished product:

Next up is my store cupboard pineapple upside down cake

Here she is...

This is a store cupboard cake as it uses tinned pineapple. In two of its guises.

So you need:

1 23cm springform tin, buttered and lined

And for the cake you will need:

1 tin of crushed pineapple

1 tin of pineapple rings

250g self-raising flour

150g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

250g softened unsalted butter

250g light brown caster sugar

4 large eggs

a bit of vanilla extract if you fancy

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.

Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the eggs one at a time adding a spoonful of flour between each to help combine. Mix together the flour, almonds and baking powder and fold into the mixture along with the crushed pineapple.

For a camp flourish, drain the pineapple rings, and place them, artist-fashion, in the bottom of the buttered and lined spring form tin. Any arrangement will be nice. Carefully pour the mixture into the tin, being careful not to disturb the arrangement. Then bake in the oven for about an hour, though check after 45 mins. It could take up to an hour 15 mins, but that will depend on your oven.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin. I decided to brule the top of mine so after it was cook and removed from the tin and inverted, I sprinkled the top with golden caster sugar and popped under a hot grill for a minute or two to 'brule' the top.

NICE.

Finally for my MASSIVE traditional Victoria Sponge:

The basic recipe is the same as the chocolate cakes, just minus the chocolate and cocoa powder, and doubled. I used a 23cm silicon sandwich tin for this. It'll take about 30 mins in the oven.

To decorate, you will need:

300ml double cream

5 tbsp icing sugar

Good quality fruit jam, strawberry or raspberry is fine or anything that takes your fancy

A mixture of fresh fruit

Whip the cream with the icing sugar until you a have a stiff peak in the cream. Smear this over the top of one of the sponges. On the bottom of the other sponge, smear with any amount of jam you like! Arrange the fruit on the layer of cream, making sure they're not too near the edge. Place the other sponge, jam bottom down, on top of the fruit. For an extra flourish, cover the top in cream and artfully arrange strawberries on the top. Lovely.

This cake will serve between 16 and 20, depending on how greedy they are.

And for all this baking, I made £74.62. Nae bad.

FROM THE VEG BOX - WORKING DINNER

So, Jaimie is now working. Working hard for the money. So dinners aren't as leisurely as they once were, and a lot more 'grabbed between the two screens'. If you're interested he's been working on this little wonder.

But I still want to make sure we're eating proper like, even if it's quick.

So this is a little root vegetable curry that I knocked up. Can also be enjoyed without 3 computer screens.

2 onions

ginger about a thumb sized piece

3 garlic cloves

750g root veg - I used what we had in the veg box, so parsnip, cauliflower, carrot and potato

6 cardamon pods

2 tsp cumin seeds

3 tsp coriander seeds

2 tsp ground turmeric

1/2 tsp chilli powder

500ml veg or chicken sock

single cream

Peel and chop the onions into hunks and blitz in a food processor until you get a rough mince. This is thoroughly satisfying. Peel and grate the ginger and peel and finely slice the garlic cloves. Also, peel and roughly chop the roots into chunks.

Now the spices, remove the black seed from inside the cardamon pods and grind them up along with the cumin and coriander seeds.

Heat the oil in a large pan and soften the onions, so they don't go brown. Add the ginger and garlic and after a few minutes add the ground spices along with the turmeric and chilli powder. It looks awesome:

Cook this through until you can smell the waft of the spices then add all the chopped veg. Add 500ml of chick or veg stock and partially cover with a lid and leave to simmer gentle for about half an hour. Carefully stir in the cream but don't let it boil or it'll curdle. Check if it needs a little more of anything. And serve with basmati rice, all fluffy like, and some nan bread.

Why have brownies, when you can have....

BLONDIES!

I've only recently discovered these truly amazing things. I had huge cravings for Brownies when I was pregnant with Laika, and I'm sure if I'd have known about them I'd have gone wild for them. I recently made them as an experiment for the Sisters Burn Christmas fair, Sister Sledge for the cake stall:

(you can see them in the front middle!)

So here is my recipe for creating these lovely things. And here's some I made earlier:

200g white chocolate

300g light muscavado sugar

250g unsatled butter

4 eggs, beaten

200g plain flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

85g peanut butter

100g unsalted peanuts (optional)

This recipe makes about 10 generous pieces.

So, preheat your oven to 180 degrees. When I made these for the fair I did them in a commercial oven. If you can get hold of one of them, so much the better! Grease and line a square tin. Over a low heat, melt together the chocolate, butter and sugar and stir until melted and combined. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Thoroughly mix in the eggs. Add the flour, baking powder, peanut butter and if using, the peanuts. Mix together until combined. Spread this mixture into the tin.

Right, the amount of time this takes TOTALLY depends on your oven. You want them to be squidy in the middle and crisp on the outside. Timing this is difficult without overdoing the outsides, so you may have to play around with it. I reckon on anything up to 45 minutes, but have a look after about 25 minutes.

Cool in the tin, and then portion by cutting into squares. Then eat. Alone.

FROM THE VEG BOX - CANDLE LIT CELERIAC

Who says celeriac can't be sexy. Well, no one actually. But I thought I'd made the effort this evening for dinner, seeing as we were using up the remnants of the veg box and dinner was going to be soup. Nothing wrong with soup for dinner, it's just sometimes it feels a little underwhelming.

So I lit a candle, in the hope that would make it feel a little more... sophisticated.

But it turned out that the soup was actually rather good. It was a suggestion from Jaimie, but I cobbled together some ingredients and pulled it together. The apple in the recipe isn't very pronounced but gives the soup a really fresh after taste. Which is nice. I suggest adding a little lemon juice in this recipe. This is because I added a rather posh ingredient, lemon and thyme infused salt to be precise. I imagine not many people have this to hand. So a squeeze of lemon should do the trick.

So, here is my Candle-lit celeriac and apple soup recipe (serves 2/3)

1 onion, chopped

1/2 head of celeriac, peeled and chopped

1 bramley apple, peeled, cored and chopped

600ml vegetable stock

200ml single cream or milk

salt and pepper

lemon juice (optional)

In a pan, sweat the onions in a little oil until soft. Add the celeriac and apple and heat through for about 10 mins to soften. Add the stock and reduce the heat to a simmer, and leave to simmer for 20-30 mins until everything is a little mushy. Remove from the heat, stir through the cream and add salt and pepper. Take a hand blender and blend until a smooth consistency is achieved. If the soup is a little thick, add a touch more milk or cream, or indeed more stock. If using, finish with a squeeze of lemon, perhaps some parsley, and serve with crusty rolls.

LEFT OVER CHRISTMAS CRANBERRIES...

For some reason I had a bag of cranberries left over after the Christmas period. I wasn't really sure what to do with them until I came across a recipe for cranberry and cream cheese muffins in January's Good Food magazine. I thought I'd make a little adjustment to the recipe so now they're:

Cranberry, clementine and cream cheese cakes

This recipe used up all the cranberries I had left over, about 300g which left me with a nice extra batch of cranberry sauce which went well with some pork pie for lunch.

100g full fat soft cheese

400g caster sugar

300g cranberries

200g plain flour

50ml clementine juice

2tsp baking powder

2 eggs

75ml sunflower or vegetable oil

1tsp vanilla extract

First off, you have to make your cranberry and clementine sauce. Heat the cranberries in a pan with 100g of the sugar and the clementine juice over a medium heat. It should take about 20 mins for you to achieve that sort of syrupy, jammy texture you're looking for. The skins of the cranberries should split, but mash any of the more stubborn ones with the back of a wooden spoon. Take off the heat and allow to cool completely. You'll need about 200g for the cakes and the rest, spoon into a sterilised jar.

Preheat the over to 180 degrees.

Beat together the cream cheese with 25g of the sugar and set to one side.

Sift the flour into a bowl and add the remaining sugar and baking powder. Add the eggs, oil vanilla and cranberry mixure and gently stir together. It doesn't matter if the mixture is lumpy. Divide it up between muffins cases, the mixture should do about 15-16 cakes. Make a small dip in the centre and pop in a tea spoon of the cream cheese mixture. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden.

GOT A NEW PINNY!

This pinny was from my Ma for Christmas. It's from the amazing Anthropologie, my new favourite shop. I like it so much I decided to overhaul the blog's design in its honour.

FROM THE VEG BOX

New Year, new you. So we decided that we'd be all ethical and good and eat more veg. So, on recommendation from James and Charlotte, we opted for the Able & Cole large veg box, twice monthly. Turns out its reasonably economical. And there's no packaging, they pick up the box and they're very nice on the phone to boot.

I've decided to regale you with recipes from my veg box, and this is the first this I made.

Laura's veg box curried parsnip soup.

1 large onion, roughly chopped

1kg parsnips, roughly chopped into small cubes

2tbsp olive oil

3 sprigs or so, of fresh thyme

3tbsp honey

4 tbsp mild curry powder

1.5 litres chicken stock

200ml double cream (naughty!)

bunch of fresh flat leaf parsley, or coriander to serve

So, preheat the oven to 200 degrees. In a roasting tin toss the onion and parsnips with the oil, thyme, honey and curry powder. I used mild curry powder as I'm a wimp, but feel free to spice things up with more potent blend. Pop into the oven for about 30mins until all the parsnip is cooked through and very soft.

When this is nearly done, get your stock into a large pan, along with the cream and bring to a simmer. Add the roasted parsnip and onion, being sure to pick out the thyme stalks. Simmer these in the stock and cream for about 10 mins. At this point, if you like, you can add a ladle full of the stock into the roasting tin, placed over the heat, to get all the lovely roasted flavour from the bottom of the pan, and add this to the soup. Remove the pan from the heat, and with a hand blender, blend the soup until smooth. If using a hand blender, be patient, it might take a wee while, but it's worth it for non-lumpy soup. If the soup is a little thick at this point, add some more stock to get a smoother finish. You don't want it to have the consistency of baby food, because that's gross.

Lovely, serve it with snipped flat leaf parsley or coriander and little toasted nan breads.

IT'S BEEN A WHILE...

So, it has been a while. I've been off cooking up a storm though. And here she is...

And from the off, she was influencing the culinary pursuits around her:

Her name is Laika Ida Barker. And she was 7lb 12oz. And she was born August 26th 2010. My best creation yet.

DO IT LIKE DELIA

A observation on food culture from neither a chef or a cook.

By the amazing Katie Anne Harrison.

Ooop, Have a Pavlova...

Following my porcine triumph, I turned the camp up to 11 by serving a Rose and Raspberry Pavlova. The addition of the food colouring is what gives it it's camp as Christmas allure.

For this pink delight you will need:

• 4 egg whites
• 225g golden caster sugar
• 1 tsp cornflour
• 1 tsp white wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp rose water (one for the merriguene one for the cream topping)
• 1 punnet of fresh raspberries
• 1 tsp red food colouring
• 284ml carton double cream

Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Cover a baking sheet with baking parchment. Whisk the egg whites with electric beaters until they just form stiff and shiny peaks. Gradually add the sugar a couple of tablespoons at a time and whisk really well between each addition. When all of the sugar is used up continue whisking for 3-4 minutes or until the meringue is stiff and glossy and stands up in peaks, then whisk in the cornflour, vinegar and 1 tbsp of the rose water. Spoon the mixture onto the baking parchment and use a palette knife to make a circle about 20cm in diameter. Put in the oven, turn the temperature down to 120C/fan 100C/gas 1/2 and cook for 11/2 hours. Turn the oven off and leave the meringue inside until completely cold (you can make this the day before and leave to cool overnight).

Carefully peel off the baking parchment and put the pavlova on a serving dish. Don't worry if it cracks.

Whip the cream into shape in a mixing bowl with the rest of the rose water. Then spoon onto the pavlova. Spoon the fruit on top of the cream, dust with a little icing sugar and serve.

Then let your Dad enjoy...

The Best Pork My Dad Has Ever Eaten...

Long time no post. But here we finally are.

I thought it would be impossible not to put up a post about the pork belly dish I cooked a few Sundays ago which was termed by my Dad as 'the best pork I've ever eaten'. Praise indeed. I cannot take all the credit for this however. My restaurant-style pork belly was inspired (in it's cooking method at least) by old Gordon. (Ramsey not Brown)

We had the lovely Natali, and the equally lovely Tarek round for Sunday lunch with my Dad so I thought we'd push the boat out. So, one trip to the horrendously expensive Borough Market later, we arrived home on the Friday afternoon with a massive piece of pork belly.

I started by making a rub for the pork belly:

1 tbsp fennel seeds

1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped

2 cloves garlic

salt

pepper

olive oil

Crush all of these ingredients into a paste in the pestle and mortar.

Take your paste and totally cover the pork in the delicious, earthy rub. Cover and leave to marinade in the fridge until you are ready to cook it. I left mine from the Friday evening till Sunday morning. Give it some time and some love. When you're ready to cook it, remove from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature. Place in a roasting tin so that it is a snug fit. Then, this is the scary bit, cover totally in fat. I used a mixture of melted goose fat and sunflower oil.

Now I know this sounds horrendous but it's not. It's simply a method known as 'confit'. You can use entirely goose fat if you wish, no doubt the flavour is amazing, but it's a little extravagant for me so I did a mixture. Set the over to about 150 degrees. Cover the whole thing and then bake in the oven for 3 hours. The piece of meat we had was about 1.5kgs. But I reckon between 3 and 4 hours for any piece should be plenty.

And here is the result:

Delicious. But we're not finished here. Next you need to place your pork belly between two pieces of baking paper on a flat surface. Then add a heavy weight (I used most of the cans in the cupboard and this marvelous French cookbook) to the top in order to flatten the joint out, and give it that restaurant quality feel. It also make the whole thing easier to portion.

This is then left to flatten for as long as you need to. About an 40 minutes before you want to serve this beast, heat your oven to the hottest it will go. For me that 250 degrees. Hot stuff indeed. Get a large frying pan really hot on the hob and take your pork and place it crackling side down. Leave this for about a minute or two. This is the start of your AMAZING crackling. After that, take the whole pan and shove it in the oven to finish for about 20-30 minutes. This will give you amazingly tender meat, beautiful crisp crackling and, according to my Dad 'the best pork I've ever eaten'.

We served this with some Moro-inspired cabbage wedges and a spring veg medley of peas, asparagus and ribboned baby courgettes.

We also had a super camp desert, but I'll save that for the next post. Get your fruity hat on.

She Wore Blue (Red) Velvet, oh oh...

Blue Velvet was my dog Charlie's favourite song. He has such good taste. I imagine he would have stretched to red velvet had he become aware of the Red Velvet cupcake from the Hummingbird Bakery. These are the legendary red and white cupcakes from Notting Hill's most over the top and expensive bakery and purveyors of all American baked goods. Jaimie was given the cookbook for Christmas, so I decided to tackle these infamous ruby jewels.

Red Velvet's are essentially chocolate cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting. These days a quite significant quantity of red food colouring is added to achieve that beautiful red tinge, however in the olden days cocoa powder was apparently much lighter in appearance, giving the cupcakes their famous red colouring.

Red food colouring or not, they tasted great. I took them to my friend James' for Sunday lunch as a little treat. So to the recipe:

For 24 cupcakes you will need

500g plain flour

165g unsalted butter, at room temperature

500g caster sugar

3 large eggs

6 tbsp red food colouring

3 tbsp cocoa powder

1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 and 1/2 tsp salt

330ml full fat milk

1 and 1/2 tsp red wine vinegar

1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. In a small bowl, sift the plain flour. Set aside. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about three minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Whisk together the red food colouring, unsweetened cocoa powder and vanilla. Add to the batter and beat well.

Stir the salt in with the buttermilk and add to the batter in three parts, ­alternating with flour. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are fully incorporated, but make sure you do not overbeat.

In a small bowl, stir together the cider vinegar and baking soda and add to the batter and mix well.

Divide the mixture into cases, then bake each tray of cakes for 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Next to the cream cheese frosting. Which to be honest, I could eat on its own. So for that you will need:

125g cream cheese, come on we all know its Philadelphia

250g icing sugar, sifted

90g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

This couldn't be easier, all you need to do is to combine all these ingredients in either a food processor or by hand. I did it by hand, it didn't take that long at all. And it was lovely. When the cupcakes are fully cooled apply a generous layer of the cream cheese frosting to the top. NICE.

Here is the finished article (I've got my camera back now, so the photos are loads better!)

So I transported them all around London, up to Columbia Road flower market, and then off to Fulham for Sunday lunch with James. Thanks for a lovely afternoon Mr Arkoulis...

Wandsworth Frittata

Went for a lovely dinner and catch up with my old school friends Lucy and Georgie. We went over to Lucy's place in Wandsworth for a spot of chorizo and potato frittata. Her recipe is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Lucy was saying that she wasn't a very good cook, but this proved her to be mistaken. She was also worried about the amount of rosemary that the recipe called for, but, to be honest, the rosemary added a whole new dimension to it. Delicious. It was so nice that I convinced her to give me the recipe.

And here it is...

4 small waxy potatoes, scrubbed and cut into chunks

2 red onions, sliced

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

6 large free-range or organic eggs

2 x 60g good-quality Spanish chorizo sausages, cut into 1cm thick slices

2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves picked

Lucy didn't do this bit, but Jamie's recipe calls for:

2 shallots, peeled and very finely sliced

Juice of 1 lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

Preheat your oven to full whack, or get your grill nice and hot. Put the potatoes into a saucepan of boiling salted water and simmer them until cooked, then drain in a colander and leave them to steam dry.

Beat the eggs with a fork in a large mixing bowl, season well with salt and pepper, and put to one side.

Heat a 20cm non-stick, ovenproof frying pan. Add the onions and cook until soft. Add the chorizo slices and the potato chunks. The chorizo will start to sizzle, releasing all its tasty oils and spices. After a couple of minutes, when everything's lightly golden and crisp, remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and put to one side. Sprinkle the rosemary leaves into the hot fat. As soon as they hit the pan, they'll start to crisp up. Pour the beaten eggs on top immediately, adding the potatoes and chorizo and spreading everything out evenly. Place the whole pan in the preheated oven or under the grill until the omelette is golden brown on top and just cooked through in the middle.

Lucy didn't include this bit, but Jamie's recipe calls for:

While the omelette is cooking, put the shallots into a bowl with the lemon juice, some salt and pepper and a glug of extra virgin olive oil. Toss and pinch the shallots with your fingertips to soften them slightly, then mix in the parsley leaves. Serve a little on top of the omelette and tuck in!

Lucy served her fritatta with a dressed spinach salad and crusty bread.

Chain Gang

Today I received and email from Grace asking me to participate in a recipe chain email. What a marvelous idea. I'm going to be blogging these as they come through, live as it happens. The excitement is killing me.

So firstly, here is Grace's take on the Italian bread salad Panzanella:

A Take on Panzanella

6 - 8 Tomatoes
1 red onion, thinly sliced (white onion will do if not)
1 garlic clove, chopped
3 table spoons of olive oil
1 spoon full of capers, chopped
handful of anchovy stuffed olives, chopped
handful of basil, torn up
parsley, finely chopped
red chillies (optional)
salt, pinch
pepper, pinch
2 table spoons red wine vinegar
chopped ciabatta (optional- it is part of the original recipe, but it goes soggy and is just as good without)

*Put the tomatoes into boiling water until the skins split. peel and chop roughly

*Let them cool and stir in the onion, garlic, capers and olives.

*Chop/tear the herbs and fold in with the salt, pepper, vinegar and oil.

If you want to use ciabatta, slice into chunks and layer the bottom of a bowl, the rest of the mixture goes on top and soaks into the bread, just as good without though and is delicious served with crispy skin sea bass or with a feta and spinach filo pastry pie.

Total chef pin-up

I must say that I have fallen ever so slightly for Julian Biggs, head chef at Hix Oyster & Fish House in Lime Regis. What he says about how to cook fish, here.

The Cook's Atelier

Beautiful food blog.

Beautiful pictures.

With thanks to Mary. She lives here.

Do you want a cake wi that?

Made some custard buns the other day. They were quite nice, but I ran out of butter to make an icing for them. Which they badly needed.

100g Custard Powder

200g Softened Butter

2 eggs

4 tbsp milk

140g Caster Sugar

100g self raising flour

Heat the oven to180C/160C fan and place 12 paper cases in a muffin tray.

Beat the custard powder with the butter eggs and milk, then stir in the suagr and fold in the sifted flour. The custard powder makes it turn an amazing honey yellow colour. Worth it just for that.

Spoon into the cases.

Bake for 20 mins. Leave to cool completley.

Like I said these would massively benefit from some butter icing. But I ran out of butter. What I did try was a smearing of lemon curd on them. Which was nice.