Cherry bakewell tart

Writing a masters thesis is hard work and one has to reward themselves for a job well done. The cherry bakewell tart is one of my favourites, but making it is quite a hassle, so I only make it on special occasions. Finishing a thesis is a good enough reason, I think.

Cherry bakewell tart

Crust: 1/2 of the crust recipe from here.
Use it to thinly line a medium size baking tin. Preheat the oven to 170C. Cover the dough with baking paper and fill it with rice for weight. Bake the crust for about 15 minutes, then remove the rice and bake it for 5 more minutes. Set aside to cool.

Filling I: The cherry jam
300g cherries
 1tbsp potato starch
70g sugar (or to taste, I never measured that)

Boil the cherries and sugar with a little bit of water until cooked. Homogenise(sciency!) it with a blender. Mix the potato starch with 2 tbsp cold water or cooled(!!) cherry juice from the pot and quickly stir it into the cherry mush. Cook the jam for a little longer until it thickens and set aside.

Filling II: Almondy goodness
150g ground almonds
3 eggs
100g butter, softened
100g sugar
almond extract (1/2 tsp)

Whisk together the butter and sugar, followed by eggs, one at a time. Add the almond extract and fold in the ground almonds.

Assembly:
Cover the bottom of the crust with the cherry jam. Carefully pour Filling II over the jam. Bake at 175C for about 30 minutes until it's golden brown.

Glaze:
100g caster sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon

Once the tart is ready, let it cool a little, then pour the glaze over the tart and let it set for about an hour.
In theory, it should make about 12 servings. In practice...well, it's an amazing tart.

The tart can also be made in muffin tins. These tiny cherry bakewell tarts were made for Aapos birthday in November.

Recipe stolen and modified from here

Spaghetti with sundried tomatoes and pine nuts or lament for Trehv

Something horrible happened on 14th of February this year. One of my favourite restaurants in Tartu closed its doors. Their food was affordable even to poor students, generously sized and unbelievably delicious. Their warm strawberry-banana crumble was to die for, but what made the strongest impression on me was this pasta dish they served. I wasn't a big fan of pasta before I went there, but Trehv made me appreciate pasta again. Tagliatelles with sundried tomatoes, peppers, carrots and pine nuts. Oh. My. God.
But now, they're gone, and their amazing pasta with them.

I had two choices - carry on living without being able to eat that amazing dish ever again or make it myself. Naturally, I went with the best option.

So here goes:

Pasta a la Trehv or spaghetti with mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and pine nuts:

120g (dry) spaghetti, boiled
200g mushrooms, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 tbsp oil
6 sundried tomatoes, chopped
2 tbsp oil from the sundried tomatoes jar
2 tbsp pine nuts
salt and pepper to taste

Boil the pasta as instructed on the package. While the pasta is boiling, chop the vegetables. In a pot, fry the onions and mushrooms with a little salt and pepper in the 1 tbsp of oil until done. Drain the pasta and mix it with the vegetables. Add the chopped sundried tomatoes and the sundried tomato oil. Cook while stirring for about 2 minutes or until all components are warm. Turn off the heat and mix in the pine nuts. Prepare to ascend to culinary heaven.
Makes three portions for a small person.

Yes, this recipe has pine nuts. No, I never learn.

My own sourdough rye bread. Aw. Yeah.

I've been wanting to make sourdough bread for quite some time. As you all know, sourdough requires a starter culture. There are several ways to acquire one: first, you could make it yourself by fermenting bread or fruit for a couple of days. The problem with that method is that it may not turn out strong enough for the first couple of batches of bread to rise properly. The second method is to get a starter from someone who already has a good, working one. Lazy as I am, that's exactly what I did. Since I don't know anyone who makes their own bread, I had think of a clever way to get my hands on some starter.

Once again, I was rescued by The Internet.

I went on a foodie forum and asked people in my area if any of them would be so kind and share their starter with me. I got two replies, which was more than enough. A couple of days later, I was the proud owner of a little plastic box full of greyish, fermented goo and a set of instructions. I am forever grateful, nice lady.

Making sourdough bread has two steps.
First, the evening before you want to start baking, you mix the starter with some water (I used 400ml) and enough rye flour to give it the thickness of yoghurt. Then you leave it to ferment for at least 12 hours, preferably in a warm place. You'll know if it's done by the foam forming on top.
Next, you add more rye flour, salt (1 tsp), sugar (3 tsp, heaped) and caraway seeds (1 tsp) to taste (I had my mum taste it since I can't - due to reasons mentioned in the previous post). The dough should be just soft enough to be stirred with a spoon. This is also the point where you take a new starter (two tablespoons for making one loaf).

Then you ladle everything into a loaf tin, smooth it out with wet hands, cover with plastic wrap or a towel and leave it to rise in a warm for an hour or three.

 

When the dough has doubled in size, preheat your oven at 225C and bake for 15 minutes. Then, turn the heat down to 200C and bake for about 30 minutes, making sure the crust doesn't burn. Finally, turn the heat down to 180C and let it bake for about 25 more minutes (total baking time should be around 70 minutes).
Take your bread out of the oven, brush it with wet hands and let cool under a towel for at least an hour and a half.

Since I forgot to take a starter when I was supposed to, I had to take it when the bread was almost ready to be baked, resulting in my bread having a crater in it. Ah well.
The starter should keep in the fridge for up to two weeks. It can also be frozen, but that may reduce its activity.

If you ignore the bitter undertaste caused by my curse, my bread was amazing.

Of course, this didn't happen without casualties, good things rarely do. Mainly, my bread got stuck in the loaf tin and I had lots of trouble getting it out in once piece. It was soft and fluffy on the inside, but the crust was STUCK. I tried to force it out with a spatula. The bread won. The spatula shattered. Note to self: next time, use baking paper or butter.

Special: Rob's chocolate poundcake!

 By Rob:

I want to have my cake and eat it too. And by that I mean, I want my girlfriend to make me some cake and then I eat it. The only problem with this is that Rita, who is a cake-baker par excellence, is around about 1,200 miles away, and even with airmail, that cake is going to go stale.

So she made the radical suggestion that I bake a cake myself. Having used an oven before, and achieved a C in Food Technology at school, I was not one to back down from this challenge.

That’s not to say it went well.

First, I carefully (skim) read the instructions that had been laid out for me:

“100g chocolate
3 big tablespoons of cocoa powder (afterthought: maybe not so big)
170g sugar
170g butter
170g flour
4 eggs
no salt if using salted butter  (if not, add a pinch)
1 level tsp baking powder

Chop the chocolate bar into nice chunks. Preheat your fan-oven to 160ish degrees (170C if using a normal oven). Grease a loaf tin or a glass bowl and set it aside. In a bowl, blend butter and sugar until fluffy. With a whisk (or a blender, I suppose), add eggs, one at a time (wait until it's incorporated until you add the next one). Mix flour, salt, baking powder and cocoa powder, add to the butter and egg goo and mix. Mix in the chocolate chunks. Spoon batter into the prepared loaf tin/glass bowl, bake for about an hour.
If the top looks like it's getting too dark, cover with a lid for a bit. Test with a narrow knife or a toothpick for doneness. If you stick it in and it comes out clean it's done. Let the cake cool for about 15 minutes, flip it out of the bowl, let it cool some more. Nom.”

I then set to the mission with all the zeal of a hero from romance literature, which would have been appropriate had the task not required specific measurements and precise processes to complete.

Clouds of flower in the eyes later, I establish that 170g of butter is an obscene amount and pile the sugar on top.

I have a Tesco Value blender which, in its instructions, advises use for periods no longer than 45 seconds, upon which time it is prone to spontaneous combustion or failure. The thought of its shuriken-like appendage melting off its moorings and shattering the glass mixing bowl in my hands would not deter me however, nor would the very real and offensively acrid smell of burning plastic. I pureed that butter and sugar to a consistency akin to ectoplasm and forged on.

I remember at this time to turn on the oven and grease the bowl, requiring more butter, which makes my arteries forcibly retract from my hands in an attempt to prevent me from subjecting them to the torture I was under orders to design.

I then set about lobbing eggs like hand grenades against the side of the glass bowl and then practicing my field surgery skills by picking out bits of shattered eggshell. By the fourth egg there is a long slew of egg-white goo stretching from the mixing bowl to the empty, broken shells a foot away in a bowl of their own.

This mess is compounded by the adding of flour and baking powder, making it seem like my kitchen was inhabited by a troll with a cold and a coke addiction.  Gratuitous paper towelling later, and it was time to spoon in the cocoa.

“Heaped” apparently does not equate to mountainous, but that’s hindsight talking. I dump my glorious brown spoonfuls into the mix and immediately add the solid, milk chocolate chunks. Before mixing.

With my temperamental blender a loose cannon at the best of times, it’s banshee-like wails at the interference of these chunks meant the mixing process had to be done with a fork. The result was lumpy and of pitch-like consistency, until I once again braved the blender and obliterated the last of the stubborn pockets of cocoa.

Splatter-shot now once again required cleaning and I foolishly left the blender stood upright in the mix. It’s see-saw descent onto the kitchen side made sure to include maximum black-brown discharge across the shiny white surface, doubling the task of cleanup.

With the bowl now full of the chunky brown mixture and several pieces of cutlery smothered in floury, bitter crème, I put the cake into the oven and spent 20 of the 50 minutes cooking time in repairing the damage this foul invention had wrought on my kitchen.

When it finally emerged from its slow roasting, the cake had risen and hardened like a bakery product. I was stunned.

Taking it out of the oven to cool, and later popping it crisply from the bowl, I was even more surprised to find the mayhem that had ensued was now so orderly and cake-looking. And cake smelling. The chocolate aroma was so strong I could smell it upstairs, and now taking a small piece at point blank range and taste-testing it, I found it so overpowering I could still taste the fragment 40 minutes later at the gym (which I felt the need to visit, having seen what goes into such a creation).

Finally, after two hours of cooling and marvellous Sunday dinner, the cake was cut and had with tea. Thankfully, it’s immense density of flavour had mellowed somewhat and the slice was eminently edible. My dad told me to pass on the message that it’s “fantastic” and argued that when Rita had given the recipe, one couldn’t say anything else.

He took two pieces with him as we went off to London for the week, and I have half of it still in my fridge awaiting consumption. Were it not for the milk chocolate chunks however, I would be sure my overzealous cocoa portions would have made it unbearably strong. Nevertheless, I count it as a success for my girlfriend, and write this as a formal endorsement of her food-blogging capacity. If a busy and culinarily incapable man such as myself can enjoy the recipes found herein, so can you .