All posts tagged baking

Something new

Those of you who read Mr Snail’s recent ScrapHappy post will know that we have a had a new oven. When we moved to Chez Snail at the end of the last century the house was about 10 years old and it already had a fitted kitchen complete with oven. This was very useful since we moved from a house with a gas cooker to one where the kitchen was only supplied with electricity. And, thus, we di not need to buy a new one. Sadly, having reach an age of about 30 years, the poor thing was struggling to do things like reach the required temperature – in fact the temperature dial was so worn, you had to guess what temperature you were selecting anyway. Mr Snail was reluctant to replace it as it still got hot, but was finally persuaded one evening when it took an hour and a half to produce some roasted vegetables for dinner… hunger is a great motivator.

Mr Snail had liked the oven in the flat that he rented down in Reading, so we decided to go with something similar and thus it was ordered, arrived and installed in less than a week. After some discussion, we were amazed to realise that this is the first brand new oven either of us has ever owned – when we were younger, we both rented flats that had ovens in them and when I moved to an unfurnished rental, I inherited an electric cooker (along with a house full of furniture) from my nan. That cooker was then passed on to another friend who used it for a few more years. The first house I bought came with a gas cooker already installed and then we moved here… and 20 years later we have a new oven!

It’s a bit of a revelation, to be honest – the thermostat seems to be very precise, so when a recipe says to cook something at 170C for 18 minutes, that’s exactly what is required. Pies and cakes are coming out beautifully – done to a turn – plus is can be used as a proving cabinet, so when the house isn’t warm, the bread dough can still rise. Whilst I’m glad to have avoided buying new up until now , I really am loving our new purchase… I bet it doesn’t last 30 years like the last one, though.

24 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on February 26, 2021  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on February 26, 2021

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2021/02/26/something-new/

Rising to the occasion

One of the joys of 2020 has been my success with sourdough. I love the fact that Homer (my starter) is unique to me, because how he has grown has depended entirely on the micro-organisms available here Chez Snail and in the ingredients that I use. I also love the fact that Homer’s offspring (Bart) is leading a happy and healthy life round the corner with a friend who we have got to know (rather than just saying hello) during this time of restrictions (we chat when we meet during our dog walks).

Recently, at the recommendation of Kim (The Material Lady), I bought a copy of Emilie Raffa’s book and have had great success with some of her recipes, including some really lovely chocolate chip bread. So, thank you, Kim.

Next experiment is going to be brioche – drool.

15 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on December 13, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on December 13, 2020

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2020/12/13/rising-to-the-occasion/

“D’oh”

Back near the beginning of the year, you may recall, I began my experiments with sourdough. It was before lockdown and it was just a whim… a vague desire to see whether it was really possible to create, from scratch, a viable culture of micro-organisms with which to make bread. And then came coronavirus and everyone had to stay at home and madly started hoarding random things… including yeast. There was no yeast in the shops and so, suddenly, sourdough became “the thing”. By this time my culture was well established and I was using it for most of my yeasted baking. I’m sure that most cultures that were started during lockdown have long since passed away, but mine is going strong.

Anyway, a couple of months ago Kate (Tall Tales from Chiconia) mentioned that it is traditional to name sourdough cultures. I wasn’t feeling inspired, so I asked Mr Snail to come up with a suggestion. He though about it for a while, and finally proposed Homer… “because ‘D’oh!'”

And so, Homer is our sourdough starter. This meant that when we passed a portion on to a friend, it was naturally named Bart. Apparently Bart too is still going strong.

Anyway, in recent months I have become a little more adventurous with Homer and was delighted to discover what beautiful sweet, enriched dough it is possible to make. I found a recipe for cinnamon rolls that I adapted slightly to make apple Chelsea buns, and it was a triumph… better than my previous attempts made using commercial yeast.

The filling is grated apple with the juice squeezed out through a cloth, then mixed with melted butter, cinnamon and brown sugar. The glaze was made from the apple juice mixed with a bit of sugar (rather than the traditional milk and sugar mix), Although the dough is sweet, it actually doesn’t contain too much sugar, so the result is not sickly, especially if the apples are a bit sharp.

Homer is also now our go-to source of yeast for all bread-making and the packet of commercial yeast is languishing in the fridge, being used only occasionally because I feel I should use it up.

31 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on November 11, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on November 11, 2020

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2020/11/11/doh/

Dough!

A few weeks ago, before we were all confined to barracks, I decided that it would be interesting to have a go at making sourdough bread. It takes a while to get the starter in a usable state and my first attempt just didn’t work – ending up watery and smelling rather unpleasant. Attempt number two was much more of a success and I have been carefully nurturing my lovely culture for a couple of weeks now. And then yesterday I noticed that it had gone mad and was bubbling out of it’s jar. So, the time was right to give it a go. I wanted to start simple and so I settled on a white loaf.

There’s mixing and kneading and leaving it to prove twice before finally knocking it back, shaping it in a basket and leaving it overnight in the refrigerator. after all the investment in time, I was itching to find out what it would be like. And the result? Delicious – a wonderful light loaf, not at all sour, but with a different taste to yeasted bread and a great texture. The next challenge is to keep the starter (now transferred to a much bigger jar) happy long-term and to experiment with some other flavours.

The recipe I worked from was in the Shipton Mill book A handful of flour. The starter is made with 1/5 wholewheat flour and 4/5 strong white flour, mixed with the same weight of water. I fed it every day for over a week, then every couple of days for another 10 days or so.

I like yeasted bread, but this is a rather good alternative – and how bread was originally made before commercial yeast was available. I’m really taken with the idea that every culture is unique because it’s the result of the person who makes it and the place and the specific conditions as well as the ingredients selected. So my sourdough will taste different to that made by anyone else – how great is that? Do you have experience of making sourdough?

23 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on April 4, 2020  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on April 4, 2020

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2020/04/04/dough/

Going crackers

I’m rather a fan of crackers and cheese and of cheesy crackers on their own, but recently I’ve been unable to find any that didn’t give me pause. First, there were some lovely locally made crackers… they were delicious, but came with a lot of packaging. Then there were some lovely crispy treats that I bought from a farm shop in north Wales when I was on my travels… and discovered had been imported all the way from Australia (WHAT?) plus they had a lot of packaging. Then I found some different local ones, that not only had loads of packaging, but also were made with palm oil (I didn’t even buy these as I noticed before I put them in my shopping basket).

It’s just like the saga of the biscuits… the only solution is to make them myself. A quick internet search and I found a simple basic recipe (flour, salt, oil and water) that could be adapted. I made some with freshly ground black pepper and some with added cheese, and voila… plastic-free, palm oil-free, yummy crackers…

28 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on July 9, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on July 9, 2019

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2019/07/09/going-crackers/

Finish as you mean to go on

So, here we are on the last day of the year…

I don’t make new year’s resolutions, I believe that when you want to make a change in your life you should do it when it’s right for you. Making resolutions because someone has told you that you ought to means you are much more likely to fail. However, it’s good to take stock sometimes and today is as good a time as any to do so. For me, 2016 has  involved lots more little steps to have a smaller negative impact on the planet and make life a little better for the people who live on it: from trying to be responsible for less plastic packaging (using soap and shampoo bars, taking our own bags and containers to the shops, seeking out products packaged in paper/cardboard/not at all), to growing lots of food; from undertaking lots of mending, to trying to cut out palm oil.

Today has been no exception: I started with a little pile of garments to mend:

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a variety of mends needed

I started by repairing a pocket of a pair of Mr Snail’s jeans. It had been repaired once before, but a new split had appeared so I used mending tape and a little piece of scrap cotton. The previous mend was spotty and the new one is checks, but only you and I know because they are hidden inside the pocket.

Next I replaced the toggles on my hand-knitted hoodie. The previous ones were glass and two of the three had broken. Before that it had wooden toggles and Sam ate them. This time I’ve used plastic, which I hope will be more durable.

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fingers crossed these never need replacing

Then I darned two pairs of hand-knitted socks. Mr Snail is very hard on his socks, so this is something of an ongoing chore.

My next job was to salvage the usable parts of the underwear that I made with my old sewing machine. Most of the pieces will be reused and stitched together using my new overlocker.

awaiting dismantling
in pieces… plus one of Max’s legs!

And finally, in my ongoing biscuit quest I made Granny Boyd’s Biscuits… a Nigella recipe that came my way via my friend Sue. The verdict: delicious and really easy to make, plus no palm oil. Thank you Sue, these are going to be a regular bake from now on.

So I have finished the year in the spirit that I intend to live in 2017. How about you? Do you make resolutions? Do you have plans?

18 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on December 31, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in ethical living
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on December 31, 2016

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2016/12/31/finish-as-you-mean-to-go-on/

The little things

Often I feel that with all the major events going on in the world, I am completely insignificant, my actions are futile and I might as well not bother. And then I realise that I’m not designed to live in this world of global news; that I can only assimilate information from a community that is meaningful to me and that I have to adjust my focus.

So, I have been trying to avoid The News, I’ve stopped following various people and organisations on social media and I’ve been concentrating on things I can do. I know that one of these things is to share ideas and so I’m feeling a little bad that I’ve hardly written for the past few weeks. I know that a stone thrown into the pond makes ripples that spread a long way. So, in that spirit, here are a few things I’ve been up to to save the planet in my own teeny-tiny way and make so ripples…

Katy the Night Owl gave me some eating apples from their neighbour’s tree, so I rolled my sleeves up and got baking, I used some of them to make an apple plait – a sweet, enriched dough filled with cinnamonny apple. It was delicious.

The finished loaf
Apples
Apple and cinnamon
Dough
Plaited

Then I put the remainder of the apples to work temporarily – encouraging some of the green tomatoes in the limery to ripen up:

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Come on tomatoes – there is nothing I like to make with green ones!

There are still chillies to harvest and tomatoes ripening up every day, so I made yet more passata, converted some of it into sweet and hot sauce (recipe here) and bottled up the rest.

Sweet and hot
Lemon drop chillies
All out of the limery
Passata
Sweet, hot and potted up
Bottling passata

I do still go shopping and when I do I try very hard to remember to take my own bags and containers. I’ve recently started going to a little local butcher who is happy to tell me about the source of all the meat that I am buying and to put all my purchases into my storage boxes rather than plastic bags… I’m hoping that she’ll start encouraging other customers to do the same.

My own containers
A big bag
Filled up
Local butcher’s

The haul included some suet for making dumplings. As with many local butchers, this was free, although a donation for their charity collection was requested. I love using something like this that’s otherwise considered a waste product. You may have noticed that my bag is emblazoned with the words ‘Community Clothing’. This fabulous project is…

a manufacturers cooperative with a simple mission; to make excellent quality affordable clothes for men and women, to create great jobs for skilled workers and by doing this help to restore real pride in Britain’s textile communities. (Community Clothing web siteCommunity Clothing web site)

I got the bag via a crowdfunding campaign which helped to get the project off the ground.

So, that’s it, that’s the sort of thing that I do – shop local, support small businesses, use and preserve seasonal produce, reduce consumption of single-use plastic, oh and make cake, because the world is a happier place with cake…

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Lime cup cakes

17 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on October 3, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in ethical living
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on October 3, 2016

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2016/10/03/the-little-things/

An apple a day…

…does not, in fact, keep the doctor away. I’m still here despite the raw apple population Chez Snail expanding. I have managed to keep accumulation of cooking apples under control, but I did arrive home at the weekend with rather a lot of eaters:

An abundance of eating apples

An abundance of eating apples

Fortunately, these will benefit from sitting in the fruit bowl awhile, so we are not having to consume nothing but apples at the moment. The ones pictured came from my dear friends Janta and Merav, who live in their forest garden in Shropshire. Janta grafts fruit trees, so the diversity that they have is amazing and it was a delight to see their trees (which I completely failed to photograph) absolutely dripping with apples.

Bottling has rather ground to a halt, although it’s due to resume today, but I did make cakes the other day: apple cider cake (which we are enjoying at the moment) and wheat-free apple ginger upside down cake (which was made for an event that was cancelled at the last minute, so is now in the freezer):

Two different sorts of apple cake

Two different sorts of apple cake

I think that we’ll have apple crumble over the weekend and I’m planning to make some sweet chilli sauce containing apples and home-grown tomatoes and chillies (picture below), but I’m on the look out for other good apple recipes… any ideas?

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Three different sorts of chillies currently ripening in the limery: lemon drop (foreground), pyramid (middle) and Bartlett’s bonnet (back)

18 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on November 6, 2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on November 6, 2015

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2015/11/06/an-apple-a-day/

The Furred Man – Half Baked

To celebrate biscuit week on the Great British Bake Off, Auguste and I have been doing some cooking that didn’t involve putting things in jars. Rather than write about it himself, Auguste asked Mr Snail to do the honours…

writinghouse

Wine and Bear ItOn your marks… get set… DRINK! Er, I mean BAKE!

Here in the UK, we have one of those pseudo-reality shows that deals with the deeply philosophical subject of baking. Such is the fervour for the Great British Bake Off (hereafter to be known as GBBO) that one of its judges, Mary Berry (whose daughter I once wrote a database for), is to become Queen of Britain should the current monarch pass away.

Auguste was so inspired by the opening episode last week that he went straight into the kitchen and drank a bottle of cooking sherry before anyone knew what was happening. Once we sobered him up, he ‘helped’ the Snail make some delicious Millionaire’s Shortbread. Here’s the evidence:

Mixing it upMixing it up

Making the baseMaking the base

Base Jumping (er, Food Hygiene issue, surely?)Base Jumping (er, Food Hygiene issue, surely?)

Eating the Condensed Milk - Auguste!!Eating the Condensed Milk – Auguste!!

Checking the RecipeChecking the Recipe

Pouring on the CaramelPouring on the Caramel

Mmm... chocolateMmm… chocolate

The Final Product - delicious!The Final…

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14 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on August 13, 2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on August 13, 2015

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2015/08/13/the-furred-man-half-baked/

1-2-3-4 Cake

Last August I wrote a post entitled Cakes and cup cakes, in which I gave my ‘standard’ cake recipe, using equal weights of butter, sugar, eggs and flour. Recently. Pamela commented on the post to suggest an equally easy recipe for what she calls 1-2-3-4 cake. She wrote:

Preheat oven to 350F, butter and flour round cake pans. 1c. butter, 1c.milk, 1tsp vanilla, 2c. sugar, 3c. sifted all purpose flour, 3tsp. baking soda, and 4 eggs. Cream butter, sugar & vanilla together, adding eggs one at a time, add baking soda & flour & bake for an hour (or until the toothpick comes out clean). The icing was confectioners sugar, butter & milk (proportions to be determined by it looking & tasting right) whipped to a frenzy and placed between the layers & around the whole cake, with middle filling (or not) and flavouring/colouring in the icing to the honouree’s preference. If you like heavier cake leave out the baking soda.

Us Brits tend to use weight measures rather than volumes, but I like the idea of using ‘cups’ and have a set of them for when I want to use a North American recipe. I understand that they became widely used in the US because they are so much easier to use when travelling  – relative volumes can be measured out much more simply than weights, and it’s easier to carry a cup than a set of scales and standard weights. However, I digress…

Chocolate orange 1-2-3-4 cake

Chocolate orange 1-2-3-4 cake

I did tweak the recipe a little, using 2 tsps baking powder and 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda in place of the 3 tsps of baking soda (which I translated as bicarbonate of soda). In addition, I added orange essence to the cake mix. There was no mention of when to add the milk, so I mixed it in gently at the end. At the time, I wanted a couple of cakes, so I split the mixture between a loaf tin and two 7-inch round cake tins, which worked well.

I decorated both cakes with chocolate-orange butter cream in the centre (butter/icing sugar/cocoa/orange essence) and a chocolate topping (melted dark chocolate/double cream/orange essence). What a lovely cake it turned out to be and one I will certainly make again.

Cake-making is a great joy to me – partly because eating cake brings a smile to most faces but also because bought cakes (other than those from the people like the Women’s Institute) seem to be stuffed full of things that I don’t really want to eat. For example, Cadbury’s Cake Bars contain:

Milk chocolate (33%) [Sugar, Cocoa mass, Cocoa butter, Dried skimmed milk, Vegetable fat, Milk fat, Dried whey, Emulsifier (Soya lecithin)], Chocolate flavoured filling (17%) [Sugar, Glucose syrup, Vegetable oil, Vegetable margarine (Vegetable oil, Salt, Emulsifier (E471)), Fat reduced cocoa, Maize starch, Dried egg white, Flavouring, Emulsifiers (E471, E475)], Wheat flour, Pasteurised whole egg, Sugar, Glucose syrup, Humectant (Glycerol), Vegetable oil, Fat reduced cocoa, Soya flour, Dried whey, Raising agents (E450, Sodium bicarbonate), Salt, Emulsifiers (E475, E471), Milk protein, Preservative (Potassium sorbate).

I don’t know about you, but I’m much happier with the seven relatively simple ingredients (or 11 if you include my filling and topping) in Pamela’s cake! And if you make my original recipe, there are only four basic ingredients!

3 Comments
by The Snail of Happiness on May 10, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by The Snail of Happiness on May 10, 2013

https://thesnailofhappiness.com/2013/05/10/1-2-3-4-cake/

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