Monthly Archives: September 2010

Goldilocks and the three shower caps

I had a little parcel this weekend from Lynne who is an enthusiastic baking friend who posts on Dan Lepard’s forum. She is based in Switzerland where I have it on good authority it is impossible to buy a decent sausage roll.

This is the best Wikipedia can do, but a good sausage roll is a mouthful to treasure!

We swap obscure ingredients from time to time and she eggs me on to bake things I would normally never dream of attempting. Lynne doesn’t have a blog yet, I think she is a bit busy, but I reckon it is only a matter of time…

Obscure objects of desire

Lynne knows my fondness for Boots disposable shower caps for covering my bannetons when the dough is rising and has sent me a box of three different sized food covers, so if the Three Bears do turn up and want to make bread, I’ll be ready for them. Though I am not sharing my picallilli with them. More on that in a later post.

She also popped in a box of French yoghurt enzymes to try out and, a very pretty little pack of mini loaf cases in the parcel and it’s not my birthday. Anyway,  I have put one lot in the yoghurt maker this evening and it should be ready for breakfast. Such a good idea, wonder why you can’t get them here?

So here are some virtual flowers from Zeb to say thank you!

Merci beaucoup Lynne!

The following morning – the yoghurt enzymes worked beautifully! A sharp fresh tasting French yoghurt. Now to make some Mellow Bakers breads…

A lovely bowl of super fresh yoghurt and Dorset Cereal!

A London Heron and others

The grey heron is a familiar site in London and indeed in Bristol where I live now. This one was fishing at Chiswick House last month. They roost high in the trees and make large nests in colonies, though when they are full grown they are quite solitary. They are reknowned for emptying ornamental ponds of fish, but I think they are extraordinary looking birds, I love to see them fly ponderously across the skies, reminding me that birds are directly descended from dinosaurs.

and here is a resourceful coot, recycling rubbish,  on the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens…

Here is Zeb’s sworn enemy – the urban fox cruising the back lane that runs up behind our house and peeking through the trellis from a few years back. The tags are courtesy of Bristol University which has a long running urban fox study going back years. Some of the foxes have radio collars on as well.

What wildlife do you have in your local towns and cities? I’d love to hear from you!

Stone Fruit Yoghurt Cake with Plums

Lets hear it for the plums! Yay!

I haven’t made a cake for a while now but at the weekend I made a version of Dan Lepard’s stone fruit yoghurt cake from the Guardian recipes this time last year. I know Caroline makes this cake a lot – see her lovely summer version of this cake here.   I had some dark skinned plums that hadn’t made it into the latest batch of plum preserves, and a little pot of mahlab, (obscure ingredient of desire sourced here) duck eggs which are great for cakes, and some yoghurt made with double cream (whistles and looks the other way).

I want to put it on record, that I’ve decided that I can make cake with pieces of fresh fruit in after all. The last time I attempted to make a cake with fresh fruit it went very wrong, have a look here:-

what can I say?

Using this recipe it came out like this:

Just out of the oven

Once it was cooked, we left it to cool for a bit and then turned it out. With great restraint left it to cool and then ate it with some more of the supersonic yoghurt.  Yum.  I really recommend treating yourself to double cream yoghurt once in a while. It comes out like a cross between clotted cream and creme fraiche. I might put some it in some scones next.

Oh Yes ! It’s looking good !

This cake made 8 glorious slices:

We had two test pieces the day it was made, and a further two pieces on Sunday afternoon for tea in the great outdoors,  having burnt a few calories rambling in some fantastic woods in Gloucestershire.

Another two pieces were warmed up in the oven and then forgotten, thus evolving into an all together different sort of cake with a gorgeous crusty caramelised exterior which we had on Monday night; and the final two pieces a few nights ago with some extra cooked plums (microwaved with vanilla and cinnamon and a little sugar) and a little more cream yoghurt. School puddings were never like this….

Ah memories!

Now it’s all gone.

To make divinely decadent yoghurt, or maybe what I made was creme fraiche? you take 200 grams of double cream, heat it gently till it just comes near the boil, allow to cool down, add two teaspoons of yoghurt and mix in and then leave to culture as you would any yoghurt you make at home. A perfect way to use up transform elderly cream that you forgot about in the fridge.