Lavender and Honey Loaf Cake

As it's a long weekend, I felt a nice cake or two would help it go more smoothly! First up is a lavender and honey cake. I looked a lots of lavender cake recipes but most were paired with Earl Grey tea, since bergamot and lavender sit so nicely together. I looked a honey cakes too, but few included lavender. I've had a jar of borage honey on the go for a while, which I love because it doesn't taste of honey (which I hate normally), and there are lots of salad recipes online that use borage and lavender flowers so I thought I'd find a honey cake with lots of honey in it, use borage honey and add some lavender. My original filling idea was lavender buttercream but I now realise that will make it taste like a scented candle. I'm now thinking about a tea buttercream or injecting melted honey into the cake once cool. I'm going to top with purple fondant icing as I've offered some to R and his ladyfriend as part of our friendfood fun, and if one is gifting cake, one should make it as pretty as possible - it's a good excuse to. Could use a tea buttercream, I guess...hmmm...

Lavender and Honey Loaf Cake
(this makes a 2-lb loaf tin but a round tin would work too I guess)
150g butter (cubed)
100g borage honey
75g white sugar
3 eggs
250g self-raising flour
3 tbsp dried lavender flowers

Pre-heat the oven to 180C (160C for fan ovens) and leave the butter at room temperature to soften slightly. Cream the butter, sugar and honey until light and fluffy and then beat in the lavender flowers. Add the eggs along with about 1/4 of the flour, beat thoroughly and then add the rest of the flour. Put it into a loaf tin and bake for 60 minutes or so.

Once cooled, I decorated it with Earl Grey buttercream and fondant icing.

Earl Grey Buttercream
60g unsalted butter
1 cup icing sugar
2 Earl Grey teabags (use decent ones)

Put the teabags into boiling water - about 100mL thereof - and leave for 20 minutes - giving the bags a squeeze every now and again helps. Cream the butter and sugar and add about 4tbsp of the tea until you get a pipe-able consistency. I added a few drops of red and of blue food colouring to make it less brown and more purple and then piped it into the cake.

I decorated the rest of the cake using fondant icing that I made from pre-mix icing sugar for fondant icing. I added purple gel colouring and after applying it, sprayed it with silver shimmer spray to make it opalescent.

Biscuits, Pizza and Not Much Else

I've lapsed a bit of late with blogging and with cooking, I'm really very sad to say. I'm exhausted again. I spoke to G at work who is a dietician by training and she suggested it's probably a minor infection upsetting absorbency of nutrients so I'm trying a few supplements "just in case".

I can't say much right now as I'm so tired - I'm going to reboot over the Bank Holiday and start cooking again, I think!

Turkey and Leek pie and Casatiello

I've not blogged for a few days over Easter because I've mostly been too busy lying on the sofa and watching the entire second season of Bron (aka Broen aka The Bridge), to which I got hooked last year with the first season and the second season had me laughing, crying and everything in between. I watched 10h of it in about 2 days and learnt a lot of useful Danish and Swedish along the way. I'm now, however, back in the real world.

I remade chicken and leek "pie" as turkey, leek, spring onion and green pepper pie which was just amazing - I added sides and a base of shortcrust (frozen, ok...!) pastry, blind baked for 20 minutes first and it was far better.

That lasted me a couple of days and on the third day, I had the leftover pie filling heated up with some casatiello that R gave me (his ladyfriend, who is Italian, made it) in return for simnel cake. It's a stuffed Easter bread from Naples and was filled with different delicious garlic-laden sausages and (in R's words) "some very phallic cheese", by which I hope he meant shape. It's not something I'd had before so I really enjoyed being forced to eat it same-day and mix it with pie filling - I left content I'd no waste!!!

Steak, Sweet Potato and Simnel Cake

No, not all three at once - even I draw the bloody line! I don't think I've ever eaten real Simnel cake and for some reason woke up with "Simnel Cake" the first thing on my mind - I vaguely knew what went in it (it's a very light fruitcake and has marzipan in it, what more is there to know?!) - so when I went to Sainsbury's, I picked up some eggs, butter and so on such that I could make one! I was after some meat to make something for The Challenge but spotted some fillet steak on offer (a mere £7 - I'm allowed it every 2 months, maximum - the cost and the cholesterol ain't good for me!), so I treated myself. I was going to have it tomorrow but baking simnel cake ran me out of energy and steak is a quick meal for me, given I'm firmly in the "cut its head off, wipe its arse and get it on the plate" school of steak cookery! I did it with some sweet potato wedges, cooked with rosemary - it was a Covington this time - rose-coloured skin and bright orange flesh and a lovely sweet, warm flavour. And reading the variety name caused me to sing "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" in the original 1976 key - which is a lot higher than the Paige/LuPone keys - or at least has bigger key change for "And as for fortune...".

I read several simnel cake recipes online and hybridised them and rejigged the measurements as I wanted to bake a loaf (slices fit into the freezer more easily etc). I took myself over to The Flavour Thesaurus to see what they had to say about almonds and guess what sits nicely with them?! Roses! Not really a surprise, given both belong to the Order Rosales. The recipe I found originally needed the juice of 2 oranges - something I didn't have - but a bit of Googling later, I managed to work out that that was 125mL of liquid that I needed to find. It was clear that rosewater would be involved and a quick raid of the booze cabinet gave me triple sec and amaretto and what goes well with orange fruit liqueur? Orange blossom water! Different flavour profile entirely but an obvious combination. As for fruit, I found every recipe online used different things, so I just used up a few things and ended up with quite a random combination but hey ho - that's why I love cooking so much - it's therapeutic in that there are no rules! As a scientist, every synthesis I perform or culture medium I make is reigned in by rules - so not having to follow a strict protocol at home is always a nice change!

The eggs I got reduced are worth a mention - they fell out of the Old Cotswold Legbar, which is a nasty horrible chicken (as all chickens obviously are) but their eggs are beautiful pale blue with almost red yolks.

Simnel Cake
(this would do an 8" round pan of the deep variety or, as I used, a 2-lb loaf tin)

450g dried fruit [for me, this was 150g raisins, 40g cranberries, 30g cherries, 15g apple-infused blueberries, 15g apple-infused strawberries, 50g apricots, 80g mixed candied peel, 20g crystallised stem ginger chips and 50g halved glacé cherries]
2 tbsp amaretto
2 tbsp triple sec
1 tbsp rosewater
1 tbsp orange flower water
4 tbsp hot water
200g unsalted butter (cut into cubes)
200g sugar (I used 50g unrefined molasses sugar and 150g white granulated sugar)
4 eggs (I used very pretty ones from Cotswold Legbars as they were reduced - blue eggs with almost red yolks!)
2 tbsp 1% fat milk (I used UHT as always)
350g self-raising flour
Icing sugar (about 2 tbsp)
2 tbsp pudding spice (I made my own: 1" cinnamon stick, 1 tsp coriander seeds, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp caraway seeds, 1 tsp ground nutmeg, 1 tsp cloves, 1 tsp allspice - mix together and grind as fine as you can - use immediately)
About 400g marzipan - I used the golden type because it's "traditional".
1 tbsp melted jam - traditionally apricot but bugger it, I used raspberry!

Pre-heat the oven to 160°C (or 140°C for fan ovens). Mix all of the dried fruit you are using in one bowl and add the liqueurs, flower waters and hot water and mix very thoroughly. Leave the fruit to 'marinade' for 15 minutes and then sprinkle with the pudding spice and mix again so that it's all well-coated. Meanwhile, roll out enough marzipan to make a 0.5cm-thick sheet that is big enough for your loaf tin (which must be buttered unless you're using silicone as I did) - use icing sugar to stop it sticking when rolling it out and once it's ready, coat both sides with icing sugar.

Put the butter, milk, eggs, flour and sugar into a bowl and mix using an electric mixer until well-combined and homogeneous. Add the soaked fruit along with their liquid and mix thoroughly.

Spoon half of the mixture into the loaf tin, add the sheet of marzipan and then add the rest of the mixture and smooth the top flat. Put into the oven and bake for about 1h50. Cool it in the tin and then remove.

Roll out another sheet of marzipan and whatever decorative touches you want and apply to the top of the cake using hot jam as 'glue' - I did a lattice instead of a solid sheet. Grill or blowtorch the surface until slightly toasted.

Steak and Sweet Potato Wedges
(Serves 1)
1 fillet steak
1 sweet potato (I used a Covington)
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
4 tbsp olive oil
1 sprig of rosemary
Salt and pepper

Unwrap the steak and leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, pre-heat the oven to 180°C (or 160°C for fan ovens) and peel the sweet potato and cut it into wedges. Pour 2 tbsp oil into a small oven-proof dish and add the wedges, rolling them so that they are coated. Sprinkle with freshly cracked pepper (I used Bristol blend but black is second best) and rosemary leaves and put into the oven. Bake for 45 minutes.

Heat the rest of the oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat and meanwhile cut the onion and garlic into slices. Cook them until they soften but don't darken in colour. Sprinkle pepper over both sides of the steak and push the onions to one edge of the pan to keep warm.

Seer both sides of the steak in the middle of the pan for 5 seconds on each side and then return to the first side and cook for 1m30 then flip and cook for 1m30. Meanwhile, put the sweet potato wedges onto a plate with the onions and garlic then add the steak, season and eat immediately for it is a feast!

Two-Hour Tagine

Today was my first day back at work and it started about 0400h when some of the contents of my stomach (bile, mostly) poured up my oesophagus and down my trachea and into my lungs, causing me to wake up spluttering and gasping for breath, shortly followed by the beginnings of an asthma attack - thankfully this one passed pretty easily but my chest has been tight all day and I've felt tired. I went into work quite late, enjoying the late morning sun as I walked up through the Hoe Park with the most beautiful view of the sea behind me - it really made me enjoy the walk compared to walking past the discarded sofas, dog-poo and mattresses on North Road West!

Today was mostly spent doing admin and the usual fire-fighting that goes with "Monday" in my experience.

I left work pretty late to make up for the late start, popped to Sainsbury's as I realised I had no peppers and so on and I wanted to use up what I thought was some lamb shoulder in a tagine. I got home and found it was actually boneless leg joint and really too good for a tagine but I had the idea in my head and that was that. I'm not going to post a detailed recipe as I kind of made it up as I went along but it's damn nice! Basically I just plastered the lamb in ras al hanout and left it for 20 minutes whilst I chopped onions, garlic, potatoes (La Ratte and Red King Edwards), sweet potatoes (Murasaki), some floppy courgettes from the bottom of the fridge, a green pepper and a couple of tomatoes...oh and a chilli... I threw the onions into my biggest cooking pot and meanwhile hacked the lamb up into 2" chunks with my meat cleaver (whilst thinking up "look at the size of my chopper" jokes...SUCH a child...) and put that into the pan too, then all of the vegetables and gave it a stir, then added a couple of cans of cherry tomatoes and two lamb stock cubes (the horridly high-salt Knorr ones). I made my usual tagine spice mix from peppercorns (and yes, long pepper catkins), ginger, turmeric, smoked hot paprika and cinnamon stick and added a tablespoon full of that, brought it all to the boil and then whacked it in the oven at 160C for 1h.

It was delicious and I feel a bit full now - there's enough for lunch AND dinner tomorrow too! Photos to follow. If I was doing it again, I would roll the lamb in honey before adding the ras al hanout.

"Wenn die Flieder blüht und Erinn’rung bringt Geh’n wir durch den Park zum Strand"

I like a nice bit of serendipity. I had a lazy, lazy weekend - I got out of bed really late yesterday and not that early today and then lazed about not really doing a lot. I chatted to Y online on my phone whilst inhaling mömmudraumur for a bit who promptly told me off for still being in bed, so up I got. By the time I got out of bed and up and moving I'd decided to 'celebrate' my last day of annual leave by going for a walk in the sun, via getting some coffee. Off I eventually set and decided to call my ex, P, who wasn't there (probably up a mountain somewhere), so I tried Dr K (straight to voicemail but called me back later) and then Dr R (voicemail again - no one bloody loves me today!) and carried on my walk up through the Hoe Park past the Easter Fayre ("I suppose they think if they spell it with a 'y' more people will go?") and whilst doing a slalom betwist the skaters outside the Civic Centre, T pulled up on his bike - he was heading for the Hoe. I never bump into people I know and it's always really nice when it happens. I mentioned I was heading for coffee and T tagged along and we ended up going on a little walk down to the sea and looking at all the damage that has still not been repaired on the Hoe, which is disconcerting. We went our separate ways and I came home via Tesco Express wherein I procured all manner of orange food and have just consumed what my ex P calls "dinner on a baking tray" - that mid-week emergency meal if, like me, you're a bit common! It was bloody lovely too!

Time for some more mömmudraumur and then I need to think about an early night - back to work tomorrow - urgh!

Mömmudraumur Með Jarðarberjumsulta og Súkkulaðismjörkrem and Gljáðum Piparkökur (Part II)

Today was not one of my best. Very high levels of extra pain-relief on top of what I normally take has exhausted me this week. I spent almost all day in bed - slept until 1430h and then read the interweb on my phone (because I finally can again!) until 1800h, at which point I was craving coffee and remembered I had mömmudraumur from last night in the fridge to have with it! Obviously too late to go to get coffee - even from Notte Street Coffee, to whom I have recently grown hooked. I've thankfully got my trusty Tassimo in my bedroom - it's been a bedroom fixture for about 4 years now - and is perfect for days like today, in which normal movements like walking or opening a window are enough to pull the relevant joints completely out of place and as I sit here, my shoulders are all over the place. I just got up to open the window as I feel too hot yet too cold at the same time and that tells me that the dysautomnia and POTS end of the Ehlers-Danlos symptombank have kicked in. There's not a lot I can do other than plenty of fluids and salt - so I'm having a big bag of Doritos and one of their over-salted sour cream dips with it to try and help. I can remember when Doritos were "new" in the UK - I remember it was a summer holiday and every day mother would stop working at her sewing machine (she sewed dry-suits from home, piece-work, awful workload and awful pay and she was doing it to feed and clothe me though of course I never really appreciated it until many years later) and send me to the shops to get some crisps, a can of coke each and she would make sandwiches - I remember thinking Doritos and Dr Pepper - both of which were new that summer I think - were the height of sophistication as of course they were "American" and to me, growing up dirt-poor in a UK backwater, anything "American" was "posh" somehow. So I always get a pang of nostalgia when I eat them even 20 odd years later.

The mömmudraumur is just delicious - I've eaten 1/4 of it already...! It's a nice texture and the súkkulaðismjörkrem is superior to English buttercream, that's for sure! I don't think I'd normally say strawberries and chocolate was one of my favourite combinations but in this cake, it just works, hands down.

I took the piparkökur dough out of the fridge and decided not to roll it as it was very, very hard and I was not going to manage it without dislocating my wrists. I instead rolled it with my hands (still in the clingfilm) on the granite slab until it was a rough sausage-shape and then cut it into rounds with my vegetable knife (the kind with air-pockets on the blade so things don't stick to it). I then cut them in half and realised I had about 40 biscuits-worth of dough...! So, I put half of them into the freezer raw to have at a later date - they only take "5-8 minutes", so says Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir in her book, but I found they took longer - I put the oven to 160°C (180°C for non-fan-ovens) and put them in on a baking tray - 20 or so on one tray - and baked them for a total of about 15 minutes - I took them out after 10 minutes but they were too squishy so they went back in.

They've been cooling since but I've had one of them - very, very spicy and fragrant and I may not glaze them after all but if I do, here's the recipe:

Piparkökur Gljáa (Pepper Cookie Glaze - this is actually my variation of a soft lebkuchen glaze)
1/2 cup golden caster sugar
1/4 cup hot water
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp amaretto (Disaronno is perfect for this as it's quite fruity)
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 star of star anise

Boil the caster sugar, water and star anise for 2 minutes and then remove from the heat and remove the anise. Add the vanilla extract and amaretto with stirring and then add the icing sugar, stirring until it has dissolved completely (heat slightly if need be).

Paint onto biscuits/lebkuchen and leave to set at room temperature overnight.