Grandma’s cakes

My Gran used to make these and I loved them, but regrettably never got the recipe off her. Saw this similar recipe recently and thought I’d give it a go.

It’s actually quite easy. Self Raising Flour, Sugar, butter, an egg, currants.

Mix the flour and sugar in your bowl, add the cubed butter and rub into breadcrumbs like you’re making pastry. Add the egg (and a splash of milk if necessary) and bring together into a dough. Turn this onto a lightly floured worktop, then realize you’ve forgotten the currants, so hastily dust it off and put it back in the bowl. Add the currants, mix well into the dough and turn back out.

Roll this to the required thickness, say a quarter of an inch, and get to it with a pastry cutter, re-rolling and using all the scraps.

Then fry them off. Grandma had a huge iron griddle thing for this, but I didn’t inherit that, so used my biggest frying pan. The recipe didn’t mention fat or oil or anything, but I did rub some oil onto the pan with kitchen roll to prevent sticking. I did about four minutes a side over a lowish heat – the outside should be nicely browned, but the cake cooked right through, so judge it by eye.

Sprinkle both sides liberally with sugar and enjoy.

Verdict? Not quite as good as Gran’s, obviously, but pretty close. Will definitely be doing this regularly, but upping the quantity. There just weren’t enough.

Not kneaded

I’ve wanted to try this for ages, and prompted by seeing a carton of buttermilk in the supermarket, here goes.

There’s no yeast or proving required so it should be quick and easy. So, without further ado, here’s plain flour (not bread flour), buttermilk and a teaspoon each of bicarbonate of soda and salt.

With no yeast, the dough rises because of the reaction of the liquid and the bicarb, so no real kneading is needed, and it’s imperative to work quickly.

Oops – I misjudged the ingredients a bit, the dough was pretty floury and needed a bit of milk and re-mixing. Still, looks okay. Half an hour or so in the oven, and what do we have?

Looks pretty interesting. There’s the crumb. Mmm, lovely. A bit heavy, but that could be the extra kneading.

Blast from the past

A blast from the past. Saw something on the telly about people making their own, and realized that I hadn’t had a Pot Noodle in years. I had loads of these when I was at school, nipping home to make my own lunch.

However, I can’t remember what they taste like. I’m fairly sure it’ll be horrid, but here goes with a beefy one … It’s all in the name of science.

Here’s the prepared feast. Note the sachet of sauce, and the bread and butter cut diagonally for extra class.

And the taste? Not all bad, if I’m honest. Not great, sure, a bit ‘chemically’, but pleasantly nostalgic in a way and with none of the cloying coating of the inside of the mouth that I thought I remembered. On second thoughts, I might be thinking of my ex’s favourite instant gravy.

Behold, bread

Behold, bread.

Not home made, as you’ll observe from the packaging, but I do tend to make my own nowadays. This bit of baguette is one of the reasons why.

This is the end of a baguette, bought on the way home on a whim for garlic bread. Note from the sleeve that it was past its best at time of purchase, reduced to a very reasonable seven pence. Butter, oil, garlic, parsley, a quick blast in the oven, turned out very nice thank you.

That was three and a half months ago.

I didn’t set out to keep it for this long, but having forgotten about it for a couple of days, it didn’t have any mouldy bits so I left it. And I’ve kept leaving it. It’s been in my kitchen for three and a half months and still hasn’t gone mouldy. Sure, it’s pretty dry and stale, which probably helps explain it, but three and a half months?

Roll your own kids, roll your own.

Corn flake cakes

I have a little helper today, so it’s simple sweet fare. Little helper not pictured, perverts. My first thought was Rice Krispies, but I haven’t got any, but I do find a box of Corn Flakes tucked behind the muesli and the bread flour. Corn Flakes it is.

As an aside, that box design is quite distinctive and although it’s been updated and modernized, it’s not much changed since, well, forever as I remember it. That’s good by me, and no doubt some post-modern cravat wearers give lectures on it, but something’s only just struck me. Why is there a chicken on it? It’s a chicken, or maybe a cock rather than a hen, but chickens don’t lay corn. Cocks don’t lay anything. They’ll eat it, but they also eat caterpillars, so why isn’t there a chicken on the Kellogg’s Caterpillar Flakes box? How can something so iconic make so little sense?

Here are the ingredients. The method’s to simple to explain in any detail (melt, coat, chill if you really want it) but I did need to check what to put in and how much. This is from Nigel Slater – syrup to offset the bitterness of cooking chocolate and butter for richness. You can Google your own volumes. One twist – I found some white chocolate in the cupboard as well, so we’ll have a go at some white ones too.

Results? Partial success. The standard ones are pretty good and little helper is currently devouring them keenly. The white ones were a disaster, though. Melted into nothing and barely coated anything. That one in the photo is the best, along with the last of the main batch.

Lamb and vegetable stew

Plenty of lovely veg in (and half an old swede to eat up), and a nice piece of lamb neck fillet. Oh, and some leftover bacon fat.

Recipe is simple enough. Dice and fry off the lamb in a pan. Dice the vegetables, but leave the potatoes larger, shred some of the cabbage. In a large saucepan, fry off all the vegetables except the potatoes and cabbage in the bacon fat. add the lamb, top up with water, season and simmer gently for a couple of hours or so. Add the potatoes for the last half hour, and the cabbage ten or fifteen minutes after that. Adjust seasoning at the end, and finish with chopped parsley.

A lovely autumn warmer.

Leftover night

Not payday yet, and I come home to find the following. In the vegetable drawer, a sad looking leek. In the fridge, some leftover mashed potato, a couple of hard boiled eggs I forgot to take for lunch yesterday, and cheese. Lots of cheese. It was on offer, I couldn’t help myself.

So, here’s what we’re trying. Chop and cook the leek, then mash it into the potato. Add the chopped egg on top, cover that with a cheese sauce (flour, butter, milk and a bit of mustard not technically leftovers, more store cupboard stuff like Ready Steady Cook), breadcrumbs and bake off.

Naked.

With topping.

Done.

Tasted pretty good, actually. Could have done with a bit more mustard, but I’ll be doing this again, deliberately this time.