Stir up Sunday...

...for years my family has had a lovingly prepared christmas pudding. it started with my grandma who had one of Delia Smiths first books. the spine hangs from the book and the pages look like a treasure map for a deserted island. notes in pencil cover every bit of free space from where my grandma had tweaked things to suit her style of cooking.

we all used to be invited round to stir the pudding and make a wish on it. i have very fond memories of this and i really do miss the excitement.

when my Grandma passed away my Auntie took over the role as head christmas pudding maker. the book is still in use and creates an amazing pudding that i look forward to each year.

this year i've decided to have a bash at making a pudding myself but i've decided to stay away from the family recipe and make something slightly different.

John Whaite posted a recipe for his exotic christmas pudding and i thought i would give it a bash...

i struggled to find the toffee vodka (there is a brand called "Thunder" but my local shops don't sell it) so i substituted it for amaretto.

you will need: 

Billington's Dark Muscovado Natural Unrefined Cane Sugar 110g
Billington's Light Muscovado Natural Unrefined Cane Sugar 100g
Billington's Natural Glacé Cherries 200g
dried apple 150g, roughly chopped
plump raisins 150g 
dried apricots 150g, roughly chopped
dried mango pieces 100g
cherry cola 300ml
1 orange juice and zest
1 lemon zest
Amaretto 4tbsp 
orange blossom water 1tsp 
rose water 1tsp 
vegetable suet 200g 
breadcrumbs 200g 
plain flour 100g 
toasted pecan nuts 150g 
ground clove 1tsp 
ground ginger 1tsp 
ground cinnamon 1tsp 
ground nutmeg ¼tsp 
4 eggs beaten 
milk 6tbsp 
black treacle 1tbsp

place all of the dried fruits into a saucepan and pour the cherry cola and orange juice over them. 

cook over a medium heat and allow the cola to boil. stir and continue to heat until the liquid has mostly soaked into the fruit.

remove from heat and stir in the zests and amaretto, along with the dark and light muscovado sugar. leave to macerate for 1 hour.

transfer to a large bowl and mix in remaining ingredients. this is the point where "Stir up Sunday" really comes into play. get your family to help you with this part as it does take fair amount of mixing.

scoop the mixture into the prepared pudding mould (you will need a 1.5-litre pudding basin, greased and lined with a circle of baking paper) and cover with a greased double sheet of baking paper. Tie cooking string tightly around the baking paper and under the lip on the pudding basin to seal then cover well with foil.
i found that i had quite a lot of mixture left over so it might be worth arming yourself with a smaller pudding mould to create a second pudding.

place into a steamer filled with a good few inches of simmering water and close the lid to steam. keep it over a low heat and check the water level every 45 minutes to make sure the pan doesn't boil dry.

if you don't have a steamer, put the pudding on a mug in a deep saucepan with a good few inches of simmering water, close the lid, and keep simmering as above, checking the water level. steam for 4½ to 5 hours. at this point remove from the steamer and allow it to cool completely.

remove the pudding from the basin and inspect the creation of all your hard work! i'm very impressed with mine and it was touch and go as to if it would actually last until christmas day, as dad wanted to scoff it.

wrap your pudding in a double layer of cling film and a double layer of tin foil and store in a cupboard until the big day. 

to reheat on Christmas day steam for 2 hours as you did first time round.

A cake for the minions...

its a bit of a tradition at work that we bake for each others birthday...well....the wednesday night lot anyway!

Frans birthday was last sunday so i promised her a cake! i gave her the option of either a chocolate cake with a chocolate brownie layer OR a banana cake with salted caramel icing. much like a minion she went for the banana.

this recipe is from Raspberri Cupcakes, an Australian blog that i have been following for quite some time now.

you will need:

for the cake: 
250g unsalted butter
500g caster sugar
4 eggs
4 banana's
1tsp of vanilla extract
500g plain flour
2 tsp bicarb
1 tsp salt
1 and a half tsp cinnamon
250ml buttermilk

for the frosting:
225g caster sugar
4 tbsp water
250ml double cream
500g butter
1-2 tsp salt
500g icing sugar

for the decoration:
1-2 banana's
small amount of granulated sugar

preheat the oven to 180°C.

start by creaming the sugar and butter together in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment.

next add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition until well incorporated.

mash the banana's in a bowl and then add them to the rest of the mixture along with the vanilla extract. beat once again until fully incorporated.

next measure out the flour, add the bicarb, salt and cinnamon and sieve half into the bowl. add half of the butter milk and beat until well mixed. scrape down the sides of the bowl and then repeat the process until all of the buttermilk and dry ingredients are incorporated.

the batter itself is quite thick compared to my normal cakes, but do not fear! divide between two 18cm cake tins, you will find that there is a lot of mixture in each tin but the cakes will be thick enough to cut in half and create 4 layers of heaven.
bake for 50-60 minutes until a skewer comes out clean and they are golden.

you will notice that the cakes dome quite a bit! no need to worry though as once they have cooled all you need to do is trim them off then slice each cake into 2 halves...oh...and eat the dome of course..to test the bake...greedy piggies...

whilst the cake is cooling get cracking on the caramel for the frosting. in a medium sauce pan add the sugar and water and stir BEFORE putting on the heat, once you apply the heat you don't want to stir at all! 

place the pan on a medium heat and allow the sugar and water to bubble away until they become a nice amber colour.
once this happens remove from the heat and carefully and slowly add the cream. it will bubble violently but this is normal. just make sure you continue to mix with a WOODEN spoon, don't use a whisk like i did...i ended up with a lump of solid sugar on the end of it and had to start again... oops!

once everything is nicely incorporated set the caramel aside and allow it to cool down to room temperature.

once the caramel is cool you can get on with the messy business of mixing the butter and icing sugar. as you can see i'm not the tidiest of bakers...

once creamed together add the caramel and beat again until its smooth and has a caramel tone to it. add the salt a little at a time, tasting as you go. you don't want to chuck it all in at once as you could ruin it.

slice the cakes and begin the layering process. there is a lot of frosting so make sure to put a nice thick spread in between the layers.

for the decorations, slice the banana and place onto a baking tray. sprinkle over the sugar and take a blow torch to them (if like me, you may want to scream "BE DO BE DO" as you do this).

i really enjoyed making this cake, it was nice to try something different and i was really happy with the result. although i think i need to practice my frosting skills a little bit...

place in the fridge to allow the icing to harden up slightly and remove 30-40 minutes before serving.

Life....

...sometimes i really wish i was more decisive!

i set myself targets or aims in life and always end up getting close to them and then changing my mind or chickening out!

an example of this would be my australian dream. i so want to go but every time i think about it i find something else to occupy my time with.

recently (with the help of this blog) some pretty amazing things have been happening in life which have confused me even further.

over the last few months i have been busy in the kitchen cooking and baking, sharing with you all via the blog and twitter. i've had some amazing comments from readers and chefs alike, including GBBO, Ching-he Huang, John Whaite and Nigel Slater.

my boss took me to a conference at work and encouraged me to follow my passion in cooking and told me to contact someone within the company to see if there was any work i could do around food. amazingly with one small email i was offered some work experience with the product development team. i just need to organise a time to go, and find myself somewhere to stay in London whilst working in the city.

after watching this years bake off i am even more determined to apply for GBBO 2014. so i've made a decision!

when the applications open i am going to take the leap and apply. if i'm lucky enough to get through then i will do my best and get as far as i can.

should i not get through i'm going to return to college and spend some of my savings doing a course in either patisserie, professional chefing...is that a word? or something along those lines.

and then finally i'll go to australia before i turn 30 and use my new skills to work my way around the country. they are crying out for chefs apparently!

so i've got my revised plan..i just need to stick to it!

Total Saving

£1,500

As promised... Egg Custard Tarts...

...what a couple of weeks its been! i seriously don't feel like i have had a single day off. work has been taking up a lot of time recently what with traveling the region to train new starters and organising a charity event (which was a HUGE success!).

the aim of the event was to get all of my colleagues to attend so that we could give them an update on whats going on within the company, raise colleague moral and also raise some money for charity. we were hoping to have at least 40 colleagues turn up to the night and we were over whelmed when 90 people turned up.

the evening was brilliant, we cooked a host of foods for the masses, i did a sampling session with some of the new lines we are going to be selling AND we raised almost £400 for Hope4Kids.

had my oven of been working we may have raised even more but sadly it decided to break 3 days before hand so i was unable to bake a single thing...ITS BEEN 3 WEEKS SINCE MY LAST BAKE!!

starting to have withdrawal symptoms now but never fear, the engineer is coming tomorrow to repair it and then i have the weekend off to bake to my hearts content.

a few weeks ago (when the oven was working) i watched the episode of bake off where they were asked to create egg custard tarts. until this point i had never actually had one, so decided to check out the recipe and give them a bash the following morning.

lucky for me i had everything i needed in the cupboard so didn't need to go shopping.

you will need:

for the sweet pastry:

165g plain flour
25g ground almonds
120g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
55g caster sugar
1 medium egg

for the custard filling:

700ml full fat milk
7 medium egg yolks at room temperature
90g caster sugar
freshly grated nutmeg

firstly you need to make the pastry. start by mixing the flour and almonds together in a large bowl.

add the butter and rub together until it resembled fine bread crumbs.

stir in the caster sugar. now i decided to try something here, rather than using normal caster sugar i decided to go for a golden caster. i wanted the pastry to go really golden and have a slight caramel taste to it.

then break the egg into the bowl. work the egg in with your fingers and bring it all together until it becomes a soft dough.

tip the mixture onto a lightly floured work surface and shape it into a ball...

...then flatten the ball with your fingers so it forms a disc. wrap with cling film and stick it in the fridge for 30 minutes. 
have a tidy up, make a coffee and prepare the cutter you are going to use.

after 30 minutes remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out on a floured worktop. the recipe i used calls for the pastry to be rolled to 5mm thickness, however when i made my first batch i found that going that thin made it very tricky to handle so i went slightly thicker and made 10 cases rather than 12.

once rolled use an 11cm fluted round cutter and stamp out discs, carefully ease them into a muffin tin. as you can tell from the picture above i didn't have any fluted cutters so i went for a cutter than looks like it fell out of the 1980s, but it worked a treat!

place the muffin tin into the fridge to allow the pastry to cool back down. preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas 6.

to make the custard gently heat the milk in a pan until just below the boiling point...

whilst the milk is warming, whisk together the eggs and caster sugar until it becomes pale and creamy. such a lovely colour!
again for the custard i used golden caster sugar to add a little colour.

pour the warm milk onto the egg mixture whilst whisking, you want to do this slowly in a steady stream. whisk until the mixture is smooth with tiny little bubbles.

pour this mixture into a pouring jug, it makes the process of adding to the pastry a whole lot easier!

i found that this recipe makes ALOT of custard and i was left with half of what was made. i used the left overs to make bread pudding but you could probably double the pastry and make 2 batches in one.

remove the muffin tin from the fridge and place on the oven shelf, then pour the custard mixture into each case, going as high as you can without it going over the edges of the pastry.
grate the nutmeg over the top of each tart and then close the oven door and bake for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180ºC/350ºF/Gas 4 and continue to bake for another 10 minutes.

the next task is to be patient! one of the biggest mistakes made on the bake off was attempting to remove the tarts from the tray before they had cooled. leave them alone on a wire rack for AT LEAST 30 minutes before even attempting to remove them.

when i posted the picture above on twitter in the morning GBBO actually retweeted me and said "Will they survive the scooping?"...

...i'm happy to say they did! and they were beautiful. the custard was perfectly done, with a slight wobble. the pastry although dark (because of the sugar used) was perfectly baked and had a caramel butter taste.

needless to say they didn't last long!

Lurpak actually shared my tarts on their Facebook page whilst they were running their pastry competition, i really thank them for that! a real confidence boost.

Post by Lurpak.