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Archive for the 'Cakes' Category

Jan 20 2009

Hail to the Chief!

Published by jennysue19 under Cakes, Main Dishes Edit This

Today I am diverting a little from the subject of British food, but if you read on, you’ll find there is still a bit of a connection.

To celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as the President of the USA, I’m planning to cook some AmerBarack Obama with the American flag - poster by Sterling Brownican recipes.

Both of them have some symbolism. Southern Fried Chicken celebrates the states and the people without whose fight for civil rights we would not now be seeing a man of colour elected to the highest office of the land.

The other recipe for Apple Muffins comes from a really great website called Mennonite Girls can Cook. (more…)

2 responses so far

Jan 04 2009

Two ways to a perfect Victoria sandwich and some other stuff

Published by jennysue19 under Cakes Edit This

Victoria Sponge
Whichever method you choose for your cake, the ingredients are the same.  You want 3 large very fresh eggs for a cake made in 8 inch tins. For 9 inch tins, use 4 eggs. 

My weight measurement conversions are approximate but they are for fillings so small differences are not significant. The weight of eggs vs other ingredients in the cake mix is what counts.

How do you know an egg is fresh? Break it onto a plate. If the yolk stays domed and stands away from the white, the egg is fresh.  If it collapses into a flat disc, the egg is stale. Really bad eggs go green and smell.

Use it in scrambled egg, put it in a foo yong stir fry, or throw it away, but don’t make cakes with it. The yolk colour is not significant to this test, and will depend on what the hen was fed on and to some extent on the breed. It can also be seasonal, summer eggs are usually darker.

The yolk of free range chickens that have pecked round a field or yard to forage for themselves a bit as well as getting good quality grain feed will be dark gold, almost orange,  battery eggs are much paler yellow as a rule.  Brown eggs are not necessarily better and again depend on the breed of hen. End of eggy lessons.

Now, weigh your eggs. This is absolutely vital.  You need exactly the same weight of fat, flour and fine caster sugar as your eggs.  What fat to use. Only one thing will do and that is good quality UNSALTED butter.  Please don’t use the spreadable butter for baking as many have a small proportion of vegetable oil. Save it for your toast.

I go to France several times a year, popping across the Channel is easy from where I live in Southern England, either underneath on the Eurotunnel service where you sit in your car, on a train for a 35 minute journey, or by one of the many ferry routes. Point here, is that even now, with the decline of the pound sterling vs. the Euro, French unsalted butter – even the organic (biologique) type - is cheaper and you can buy plenty and freeze it for all your home baking

For these recipes, you want the butter soft, but not melting. If it is the right consistency it will blend easily with the other ingredients with no unmixed lumps or curdling. (more…)

3 responses so far

Jan 03 2009

Another slice of that please…

Published by jennysue19 under Cakes Edit This


It is a great shame in some ways that changes in our society and family lives has driven out afternoon tea as a regular meal fixture, because with it has gone much of the enthusiasm for baking at home that many women of my generation learned at home with our Mums and grandmothers and in domestic science lessons at school.  Some of our best-known TV chefs like Nigella Lawson, Delia Smith and Rachel Allen have started to reverse the trend and that is good news because without them, we might consign some of the most delicious British regional cakes to history within a very few years.  

I love to have a cake to slice or individual cakes for an afternoon snack when the writing ideas and energy are flagging or to offer an unexpected visitor.
  Battenburg

Almost every county has a ‘signature’ cake or pastry and there are other cakes, adopted from abroad like the marzipan-covered Battenburg cake which have become unmistakeably British. If I had to name one cake that was typical of the whole country rather than a region, it would probably have to be a Victoria sponge sandwich. 

Victoria Sponge
I have to diversify here into a little family story. The mark of a good sponge cake is it is depth, texture and moistness. My Mum was one of four sisters all of whom were good cooks, but one, my Auntie Ruby always excelled at getting her cakes to rise, and they became known as ‘Risborough’ cakes after where she lived at Princes Risborough in Buckinghamshire. There was a good deal of rivalry and sometimes a little spite and sisterly jealousy in this name-calling and some speculation about what she put in the cake.

Victoria Sponge is usually made with self-raising flour in the UK, but I wonder if she used plain (all-purpose) and added raising agents or added an extra pinch of baking powder to the self-raising. It may also have something to do with her oven which was part of an old-fashioned Aga solid fuel range that also heated the house. I’ll be giving my own recipe and alternative mixing methods in a future post.  

To return to the regional theme, I’ll name some of my particular favourites, gleaned from various books and websites, and from a scrapbook of handwritten recipes which I inherited from my Mum – probably one of the nicest things she ever gave me along with the enjoyment and creativity of home baking.  (more…)

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