I have been a very bad blogger. I have been a very very bad blogger. It has over a week since my last post – and I have been in the kitchen – and I haven’t blogged. I feel very bad about it – all I can do is ask for forgiveness. That and actually catch up…
So since I last put an effort in what has happened? Well I finished off the pickled onions (in three types of vinegar no less). I did leave them in the brine for 24 hours more than the recipe stated but when you get home at 9.30pm it’s really not a great idea to finish pickling your onions. I’m not about to let pickled onions get in the way of my social life.
So anyway I think I like pickling onions – perhaps given that I didn’t have to peel them – there is quite a sense of satisfaction in this jam and pickle-making thing, I could almost get used to it. In saying that I have quite a few recipes that require really quite large quantities of plums, apricots, peaches, gooseberries, cape gooseberries, lemons, tomatoes and almost every other fruit mentionable – if anyone out there in Auckland has an overly productive garden I think I’ll be running a very convenient fruit for preserves swap business over the next 10 months or so. In other words HELP.
So back to the baking, because lets face it, that’s what Edmonds is all about isn’t it. Last week we had a family BBQ and unsurprisingly I was asked to provide dessert. With there being 20 people I decided to make 3 desserts – chocolate log with mock cream (2) filling, lemon meringue pie and a strawberry shortcake. I also took control of the BBQ, there will be no Men absent mindedly flipping the meat and overcooking it while I'm in control of the tongs.
Chocolate log – now this was my first journey into the world of sponge roll type baking – and it was surprisingly easy. I managed to obtain my Grandmothers sponge roll tin – it’s from at least 1966 and says “Sponge roll tin” on it so it is guaranteed to be the right size. Sponge making always has a slight air of tempting disaster, especially with my small tendency towards not reading a recipe all the way through. Now at least this time when I got to the point where it told me to pour the mixture into the tin and I looked at the mixture and it wasn’t brown, I had the good sense to realise I had missed out an ingredient – I’m getting better at this huh! So anyway I had to add the cocoa when the sponge REALLY didn’t need any additional mixing but it turned out fine, in fact it was great.
Mock Cream (2) – For some reason I felt like chocolate log needed mock cream rather than real cream. I really didn’t think this one was going to work – butter, sugar and boiling water and beat. I put it all in the bowl, turned the mixture on and nothing happened – well something happened, the beaters went around and half the mix flew out of the bowl but in terms of turning into something that looked like mock cream nothing happened. It was like this for three minutes. At this point I gave up and turned around and started some other vital cooking procedure and when I turned back –et voila – it looked like whipped cream. I swear there are little mock cream fairies out there that make that happen. I also added a little vanilla paste – not very Edmonds at all I afraid but it didn’t taste half bad.
The whole chocolate log was assembled with no issues. I didn’t manage to pipe the chocolate icing on the outside to look like bark. I do feel Edmonds down a little here. If I do reach the level of insanity where I start redoing recipes… let’s just hope I don’t get there.
Lemon meringue pie – before there was lemon meringue pie there was sweet short-crust pastry. I did make this in the food processor – every now and then a girl has to sacrifice some moral standards and if the depth of my depravity is using a food processor once in a while, well, I think I can live with that. I did go a little too short on the water so it was very crumbly and rather challenging to transfer to the pie plate. I did manage though; I am quite the legend these days after all.
Well sometimes. I made the filling for the pie – lemon, cornflour, sugar, eggs – the usual. I did think to myself – this is a little runny, I’m not sure that this is going to set. I was right. Sometimes, but only very very rarely, I don’t like being right. So what did I do? I tipped the still liquid (after 30 minutes baking) filling down the drain and made the one from the Donna Hay book that doesn’t require cooking. Disaster averted but one black mark against Edmonds…
Strawberry Shortcake - Sometimes things from 1966 are just really really small. There is a high usage of 6” sandwich tins. 6”. Really. Now I know our portion sizes have gone through the roof but that is just truly ridiculous. Anyway, I digress, again, and with this much writing I can’t afford to indulge myself. So the strawberry shortcake is basically two six inch scones with cream and strawberries in between – I’d love to tell you how it was but I was near the end of the dessert queue and unsurprisingly the shortcake didn’t make it past the first couple of servings!
And that is me all caught up – there hasn’t been any baking in the past week because it has just been too damn hot! I see the first drops of rain falling outside, lets hope that we get some reprieve from the heat so that the baking can recommence.
So since I last put an effort in what has happened? Well I finished off the pickled onions (in three types of vinegar no less). I did leave them in the brine for 24 hours more than the recipe stated but when you get home at 9.30pm it’s really not a great idea to finish pickling your onions. I’m not about to let pickled onions get in the way of my social life.
So anyway I think I like pickling onions – perhaps given that I didn’t have to peel them – there is quite a sense of satisfaction in this jam and pickle-making thing, I could almost get used to it. In saying that I have quite a few recipes that require really quite large quantities of plums, apricots, peaches, gooseberries, cape gooseberries, lemons, tomatoes and almost every other fruit mentionable – if anyone out there in Auckland has an overly productive garden I think I’ll be running a very convenient fruit for preserves swap business over the next 10 months or so. In other words HELP.
So back to the baking, because lets face it, that’s what Edmonds is all about isn’t it. Last week we had a family BBQ and unsurprisingly I was asked to provide dessert. With there being 20 people I decided to make 3 desserts – chocolate log with mock cream (2) filling, lemon meringue pie and a strawberry shortcake. I also took control of the BBQ, there will be no Men absent mindedly flipping the meat and overcooking it while I'm in control of the tongs.
Chocolate log – now this was my first journey into the world of sponge roll type baking – and it was surprisingly easy. I managed to obtain my Grandmothers sponge roll tin – it’s from at least 1966 and says “Sponge roll tin” on it so it is guaranteed to be the right size. Sponge making always has a slight air of tempting disaster, especially with my small tendency towards not reading a recipe all the way through. Now at least this time when I got to the point where it told me to pour the mixture into the tin and I looked at the mixture and it wasn’t brown, I had the good sense to realise I had missed out an ingredient – I’m getting better at this huh! So anyway I had to add the cocoa when the sponge REALLY didn’t need any additional mixing but it turned out fine, in fact it was great.
Mock Cream (2) – For some reason I felt like chocolate log needed mock cream rather than real cream. I really didn’t think this one was going to work – butter, sugar and boiling water and beat. I put it all in the bowl, turned the mixture on and nothing happened – well something happened, the beaters went around and half the mix flew out of the bowl but in terms of turning into something that looked like mock cream nothing happened. It was like this for three minutes. At this point I gave up and turned around and started some other vital cooking procedure and when I turned back –et voila – it looked like whipped cream. I swear there are little mock cream fairies out there that make that happen. I also added a little vanilla paste – not very Edmonds at all I afraid but it didn’t taste half bad.
The whole chocolate log was assembled with no issues. I didn’t manage to pipe the chocolate icing on the outside to look like bark. I do feel Edmonds down a little here. If I do reach the level of insanity where I start redoing recipes… let’s just hope I don’t get there.
Lemon meringue pie – before there was lemon meringue pie there was sweet short-crust pastry. I did make this in the food processor – every now and then a girl has to sacrifice some moral standards and if the depth of my depravity is using a food processor once in a while, well, I think I can live with that. I did go a little too short on the water so it was very crumbly and rather challenging to transfer to the pie plate. I did manage though; I am quite the legend these days after all.
Well sometimes. I made the filling for the pie – lemon, cornflour, sugar, eggs – the usual. I did think to myself – this is a little runny, I’m not sure that this is going to set. I was right. Sometimes, but only very very rarely, I don’t like being right. So what did I do? I tipped the still liquid (after 30 minutes baking) filling down the drain and made the one from the Donna Hay book that doesn’t require cooking. Disaster averted but one black mark against Edmonds…
Strawberry Shortcake - Sometimes things from 1966 are just really really small. There is a high usage of 6” sandwich tins. 6”. Really. Now I know our portion sizes have gone through the roof but that is just truly ridiculous. Anyway, I digress, again, and with this much writing I can’t afford to indulge myself. So the strawberry shortcake is basically two six inch scones with cream and strawberries in between – I’d love to tell you how it was but I was near the end of the dessert queue and unsurprisingly the shortcake didn’t make it past the first couple of servings!
And that is me all caught up – there hasn’t been any baking in the past week because it has just been too damn hot! I see the first drops of rain falling outside, lets hope that we get some reprieve from the heat so that the baking can recommence.
2 comments:
I was one of the lucky people that tasted your strawberry shortcake. It is definately "an oldy but a goody".
Also appreciated that the BBQ tongs were in your hands.
And you're still alive aren't you - wonders never cease. Thank you for the appreciation of my meat turning skills, A certain amount of restraint was shown!
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