Black Market Yeast

My guess is that back in the day that yeast didn’t come in little plastic jars that you kept in the fridge. Every Edmonds recipe using yeast requires compressed yeast – the taupe coloured stuff that’s equally moist and crumbly. Now presumably this was readily available in 1966 and I know that the Centre City New World in Dunedin did occasionally stock it in the chiller but as I live in Auckland this was of minimal use – A 40 hour round trip to pick up yeast? I might be a little crazy but I have my limits.

Here was me imagining that there was no way that I was going to be able to get hold of compressed yeast, that it was yet another outdated 1960’s ingredient and low and behold commercial bakeries still use it today. If you listen very carefully you can hear the sound of my hand hitting my forehead.

Now my next problem was how to acquire some of this yeast, I have no issue with wandering into a bakery and trying to buy some but in my area it can be an issue finding someone in a bakery with a good grasp of English. This is generally not a problem - A custard twist and a steak and cheese pie is easy enough to communicate (I have a rich and varied diet) but “do you use compressed yeast because I’d like to buy some” is a little more challenging. I did only try at two bakeries but it was wholly unsatisfying for both parties.

So what was I to do? I figured I would give it a try at my local Countdown – at any rate what could be the harm in poking my head into the no-go zone behind the plastic curtains, the worst I could end up with was another blank stare. At least that’s what I thought. My request was actually met with a look of semi-horror. Apparently they “aren’t allowed to do that”, that statement however was followed by the question of how much did I need. The yeast was then deposited into a plastic bag, which I was instructed to hide in my handbag and to not present at the checkout or face death at the sharp end of a baguette. I may have embroidered somewhat but at any rate I’m giving a silent round of applause to supermarket workers everywhere disobeying “the man” in order to help the customer. Do I feel a revolution coming on?

Probably not. I am however fully yeasted and ready to knead.

Fan-tastic

Who cares about trading restrictions when you’ve got the Edmonds cookbook? It started with breakfast – Scrambled eggs and Cheese eggs – fairly self explanatory with cheese eggs being scrambled eggs + cheese (truly ground breaking stuff). I am the number one fan of cheese but I think that the eggs were better without cheese.

It may be a simple thing but this may be the first time I’ve ever scrambled eggs in a pan rather than the microwave – I can hear the gasps of horror from the audience. I am a microwave person, not very 1966 I know but it does have its uses for defrosting, reheating and cooking scrambled eggs. Oh yes and I cook the majority of my vegetables in the microwave – is that another gasp of horror from the audience? I actually feel quite ashamed about my use of the microwave, but perhaps there are lots of people out there the same as me? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to bake my Christmas cake in there or roast a leg of lamb but how else would I soften the butter and get the broccoli just right?

The chapter preceding Eggs (where scrambled and cheese eggs reside, unsurprisingly) is cold sweets. I seem to have neglected the cold sweets section – perhaps it was the Cardrona carrot incident? So I thought it was time to pull finger as they say. In the interests of science I thought I would make Spanish cream and simple Spanish cream.

Now there is a slight misnomer here seeing that I managed to stuff up simple Spanish cream and yet had no problems with standard Spanish cream. Perhaps it is just me. Shall I run you through the recipes? I think I shall.

Spanish cream (see left)– gelatine is dissolved in milk, beaten egg yolks are added and the mixture is heated until thickened. Cool. Add beaten egg whites, chill.

Simple Spanish cream (see right) – dissolve 1 packet of lemon jelly crystals in hot water. Mix eggs with hot milk. Cool both mixtures. Mix when cold. I seem to have an issue with waiting until things are cold so the first lot of jelly and water ended up full of little bits of curdled milk when I started mixing when the two were still lukewarm. Sigh. Make more jelly. Let it cool properly – et voila – it works, who would have thought it was such a good idea to follow instructions…

So which was better? My preference was actually for the simple version but they were quit different. The standard was quite rich and had too much gelatine – In colour and consistency it was a little like the food version of latex rubber. A little less gelatine and it may have been a different story perhaps.

So far it wasn’t even lunchtime – so it was Edmonds for lunch as well – cream cheese toasts to be exact. Cheese, cream, boiled eggs, Worchester sauce, salt and pepper. Spread on toast, grill. This required me to sieve boiled eggs yolks - what an immensly satisfying thing to do! I was pleasantly surprise by my little mound of yellow yolky sand. All in all the finished result was not bad – a little strong perhaps. What was cheese like in the 60’s? We used tasty, perhaps I need to get something a little less cheesy? I garnished, as suggested, with gherkin fans. These made it. The world needs more gherkins and particularly in fans. Fantastic – don’t excuse the pun, it doesn’t deserve it.

An Official Recount and Thouroughly Unspecial Toffee

In my haste I somehow managed to forget one of the recipes. As it was the husbands birthday we (yes, we) made a birthday cake – a marble cake to be precise. And seeing that his birthday was St Patrick’s day he wanted the marble cake to be the same colours as the Irish flag – naturally. It was a beautiful thing. I made the green bit using pandan essence which is very un-1966 but which I love deeply. The husband was responsible for the orange, which you will see is more than sufficiently orange.

Even given my superhuman efforts on the weekend I did not rest on my laurels during the week. Oh no, it appears that baking is part of my job description in my new job. We had a baking occasion on Wednesday for which I prepared butterfly cakes, special toffee and marshmallows.

Butterfly cakes I later realised are not ideal take to work morning tea fare as you need to fill them with whipped cream relatively soon before consumption. Which leads to me standing in the work kitchen with a bowl, a whisk and an incredibly tired wrist entertaining a crowd. It also appears I’m not particularly adept at making the butterfly bits on the top – I think the tops are supposed to be cut in half and put on upside down? This is not what I did. Perhaps someone could clarify?

Marshmallows – I had intended to make marshmallow bunnies as it is Easter and they tend to get a good response for minimal effort but the Edmonds recipe was a little soft for piping. It said to roll the finished marshmallows in icing sugar or coconut – here’s a hint – use coconut! I did the first lot with icing sugar, which drew all the liquid out of the marshmallow and everything went nasty and oozey – not good. But the ones coated in coconut were good. I delighted the Husband by making them pink, it’s always the little things!
Special toffee is not special at all. It’s a lie. Don’t make it.

11 down

I seem to have fallen into the trap of too much baking resulting in not enough writing so I’ll give you the cornetto version – no boring bits. Well that’s something to aim for.

To start off apparently I did not state the true horror that was the chocolate filling. I’m sorry. It was very bad. I don’t know what else to say.

Now – for the weekend’s baking extravaganza. First off it’s almost Easter so I had to make a simnel cake. During the production of the Christmas cakes a lovely lady called Dawn so kindly offered to purchase (for the cost of ingredients and postage) my simnel cake when the time came. Simnel cake is a heavy fruit cake with a layer of almond paste through the middle. Traditionally it is decorated with a layer of marzipan on the top and 11 balls of marzipan symbolising the 12 apostles minus Judas. Knowing that semi useless piece of information won me a pub quiz once – I was the only one in the pub who knew!

Anyway, it baked the simnel cake and to my mind it was surprisingly small and dark. The almond paste also stuck to the sides of the tin and pulled out when I released the spring form. I only hoped that Dawn survives! If she does perhaps she can provide feedback via the comments function?

Now as well as being Easter it was also St Patrick’s day and St Patrick’s day is the Husbands birthday. It also happened to be the day that I started a new job – internal promotion so thankfully they were already aware of my baking proclivities. All of this meant that much baking was required. I decided it was a worthy reason to crack into the sweets section which had so far remained un touched.

Russian fudge – who doesn’t love Russian Fudge! I did make the mistake of buying Home brand sweetened condensed milk though. Personally I think this is (as Marcus Lush would say) a condensed milk crime. I think of condensed milk as milk which is condensed. Duh, right? Home brand sweetened condensed milk is water + milk solids (read really rubbishy whey powder) + vegetable oil + sugar. It’s just not right.

Anyway the Russian fudge turned out fine in spite of inferior ingredients. I put it into an ice cream container because I think all home made sweets should be served out of ice cream containers. Because I had to split the fudge between two ice cream containers (one for me, one for husband) the fudge looked a little insubstantial and lonely. So I made Coconut ice

Coconut Ice is one of the Husbands favourites – just why, we aren’t sure. I have the theory that it is because it is pink and he loves pink food. It is revelations like that that explain why I don’t refer to him by name – no man needs everyone knowing he has a penchant for pink food.

Stop me if I’m wrong here but I’m sure coconut ice is normally two layers, one pink one white. Apparently in 1966 there was coconut ice apartheid. One recipe for pink, one for white. I tried to layer them in the tin but they split right apart when I cut it up. Now what is the hidden meaning in that?!?

Now that I have a reputation to uphold I couldn’t just turn up for my first day on a new job with one ice cream container – no matter how full. I had to also fill the biscuit tin, and the biscuit tin is a sizeable beast

Highlander biscuits and sante biscuits – very similar except the second had chopped up chocolate in it – which naturally made it far superior. They were both quite round, I am tempted to call them cookies rather than biscuits.

And that didn’t seem quite enough so then I made raspberry delights. Except I couldn’t be bothered digging out the raspberry jam so they were fruit salad delights. This is one of those awfull recipes where it says “cream 2 tbsp of butter and 2 tbsp of sugar” and you try to chase the tiny quantities around the bowl. I made a whole 8 fruit salad delights – they were like very thin flat cupcakes. Would not try again.

Because we cannot live on baking alone I also ventured into the meat section and made two recipes over two nights. Beef stew and dumplings were first and most fantastic. Everything that is good about old style home cooking is encapsulated in this recipe. There should be more dumplings in our diet – especially when you make them with lard – so so good. So good.

Now the other recipe was french steak – a little more unusual. Take your largish pieces of stewing steak, knead with seasoned flour in the casserole, add onions and carrot on top, pour in viegar and water – cook over low heat. I thought that the vinegar might be a good thing but it wasn’t! Also all the flour seemed to get stuck down the bottom in big lumps and the sauce never thinkened. All in all not great – would not repeat.

The upside of the french steak was that I also made baked custard. I love custard. A lot. I am slightly confused though as it said to cook in a pie plate and the custard completely filled the pie plate, yet when I made the pumpkin pie the pie plate was far too large! I assumed that if you aren’t going to give people specifics – eg shallow or deep pie plate – that there would be only one. How wrong I was.

So that was everything! 11 recipes! Slightly reminiscent of the 11 apostles perhaps? That should help me get back on track. and it’s easter this weekend, more baking I think.

Hello Pumpkin

I decided to invite 6 girls over to dinner – why? Because my life is just not busy enough. I have been taking Thai cooking courses (tres Edmonds relevant no? and again my life is not busy enough) and so the starters and mains were thai but the desserts were Edmonds. I did think about doing Edmonds for the main part of the meal, in fact I browsed through to see if there was anything suitable but I couldn’t bring myself to serve chipolata spaghetti and fish pie. I just couldn’t!

However Edmonds is ideally suited to desserts. I carefully selected ginger pudding – the first of my steamed puddings, vanilla sauce – to go with my ginger pudding and pumpkin pie because one dessert is never enough

Pumpkin pie – I’m a Pumpkin pie fan but I was quite surprised to find it in the Edmonds. I guess it’s just so American that I didn’t expect to find it in the epitome of NZ cookery. Turns out that Edmonds has done quite well with this one too. I had one slight issue with the recipe, and it’s my fault not Edmonds – I think pie plates might have been quite shallow things in the 60’s? The tide was most definitely out. So many people haven’t tried Pumpkin pie before – those who hadn’t loved it last night. If you haven’t tried it – you should, there isn't enough pumpkin pie in NZ.

Vanilla sauce is runny custard. I feel robbed. I may start referring to custard as vanilla sauce in the future though.

Ginger pudding - ginger flavoured steamed pudding - which you could probably guess from the title. This was ok but I had greater hopes and expectations. I love a good steamed pudding and this was an ok steamed pudding - prehaps aunt betty has been spoiling me? I had expected something a little lighter and this was verging on rubbery, the ginger was also not quite strong enough - if I was tarting it up I would have added a little chopped stem ginger along with a tablespoon or so of the ginger syrup to the basin before the mixture. Must. Not. Tart. Up.

Disaster free! Amazing! I did however manage to burn the curry paste during the dinner resulting in everyone needing to evacuate the kitchen but non-edmonds related disasters don’t count. Do they.

Hello Edmond’s it’s been a while

Last Wednesday morning I made a supreme effort and got up at 6am to commence the baking. A friend was leaving work and these days any event is an excuse for baking. The two decomposing bananas on the bench turned my mind towards banana cake.

I’m not a big banana cake fan, although I have friends who go crazy for it. I’m much more of a carrot cake person, and much much more a cream cheese icing person but then who isn’t? So the banana cake was pretty straight forward apart from the fact that it said to cook in two sandwich tins – size unspecified.

Now I do have two sandwich tins but they are either 8 or 9” and had I cooked my banana cake in these I can guarantee that I would have had had two banana pancakes. So I did what any self respecting person would do at 6.15am - I stuck the whole lot in an 8” spring form tin, lowered the temperature a little and hoped for the best.

And it turned out really well! It’s now my new gold standard banana cake recipe! Here I was thinking I was courting disaster – turned out I was, just not with the banana cake. Seeing I had stuffed all the cake batter into one tin it took twice as long to cook as expected. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I hadn’t got cocky and decided to do some extra baking.

I thought I could just whip up some Anzac biscuits while I was waiting for the banana cake.I love that I am not the kind of person who decides to whip something up. I also love Anzac biscuits. Mmmmmmmm. I think there may have been a slight hitch in the recipe though as the mixture was really dry. Dry as in I had to press it into balls. This may not have been an issue but because the cake took so much longer I ended up having to put the trays of rolled up biscuits into the fridge where they dried up even further. By the time I cooked them that evening they where like little spherical chunks of chipboard.

A banana cake needs chocolate icing. Unfortunately I had already made the chocolate icing recipe so the closest thing was chocolate filling. This almost challenged the carrots in jelly recipe for the “what were you people thinking” award.

Imagine – if you will – an airy combination of gelatine, cocoa, sugar and egg white. It was quite liquid when I left home so I thought if I put it in the fridge at work to firm up I would be able to fill the cake with it later. The problem was that due to the gelatine it set completely so that when I tried to spoon it out it went sort of chopped and curdled looking. I did use it to fill the cake but the top layer was balancing and wobbling on top of this layer of brown chunky ooze. If anyone has ever seen those kids programs where they “gunge” people – it looked suspiciously like gunge. All this would have been forgivable if it had tasted any good, naturally it didn’t. And I didn't get a photo - a prime opportunity missed.

I’ve also got a pumpkin pie, ginger pudding and vanilla sauce to write up but I am afraid that will have to wait. This weekend is going to involve the cooking of a simnel cake – unexplored territory for monetary gain.