strawberry jam ice cream

Strawberry jam ice cream: pretty pretty pretty. And sweet in just the right subdued kind of way. It's lovely as a scoop on its own, and amazing mixed with meringue and raspberries. You MUST use homemade or good quality store-bought jam - the kind with chunks of fruit in.







strawberry jam ice cream

from Simon Hopkinson, Week In Week Out

300ml full fat milk

1/2 vanilla pod, split lengthways*

4 egg yolks

250ml double cream

150-175g strawberry jam (homemade or quality store-bought)

Place a large metal bowl in the freezer (or at least the fridge). Gently heat together the milk and vanilla pod in a solid-bottomed pan. As it comes to the boil, give it a whisk so as to disperse the vanilla seeds into the milk. Cover, and leave to infuse for 20 minutes. Beat the egg yolks with a fork in a small bowl and then mix in a little of the milk to loosen them. Add this to the vanilla-milk mix, whisk together and then cook over a very gently heat, constantly stirring with a wooden spoon, until the mixture has lightly thickened - do not allow it to boil. Take the chilled metal bowl from the freezer (or fridge), pour the mixture into it, and whisk thoroughly to cool quickly. Now whisk in the cream. Stir in the jam, pour into an ice-cream machine, then churn and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

* Because I can't afford to use a vanilla pod for every recipe that calls for one, I buy Nielsen-Massey's pure vanilla bean paste. In this recipe, I used 1/2 tsp. You could use a good quality vanilla extract, but the paste includes the seeds, which I think are crucial in a good custard.

roasted banana ice cream with dulce de leche

Two weeks ago, in a moment of midnight weakness, I ordered an ice cream machine, mainly because I'd just found this recipe for roasted banana ice cream. Bananas roasted with brown sugar and butter until all their sweet goodness comes out in a sticky syrup; no eggs or cream required, because the consistency of the bananas themselves does all the work; and, as a final touch, globs of dulce de leche stirred in. The result is a complex caramel flavour, not too sweet, and worth buying an ice cream maker for.

roasted banana ice cream with dulce de leche

adapted from Mike's Table

3 ripe bananas

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp butter

1.5 cups whole milk

2 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

juice of 1/2 lemon

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup dulce de leche (optional)

* You will need to begin this recipe a day before you plan to eat it.

Preheat oven to 400ºF / 200ºC. Slice bananas into coins. In a baking dish, mix bananas with brown sugar and butter, and bake for 40 minutes, stirring once. Allow to cool slightly.

Scrape the contents of the pan - bananas and sticky caramelized syrup - into a food processor or blender. Add milk, sugar, lemon and salt and puree until smooth. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours.

Once the mixture is cool, churn in an ice cream maker following the manufacturer's instructions for between 15 and 20 minutes.

After churning, mix through globs of dulce de leche. Transfer to a freezer-safe container and freeze overnight to achieve the right consistency.

honeydew popsicles; or, how to survive August in Texas

A steady diet of popsicles is the only way to survive August in Austin, and I speak with great authority, since it's now the end of August and I've survived. I love anything melon flavoured; I love these popsicles, which are sweet and simple. I love my friend Kate for modelling them for me, and for still being my friend when I told her that Australians call them iceblocks.

I bought this popsicle mould, which I like because it uses wooden popsicle sticks. I wanted that summery nostalgic woody popsicle stick flavour; it feels essential to me. And you can compost them afterwards, or put them to other uses, so that you don't feel too hedonistic about it.

Also, I can't believe it's been five months since I lasted posted. Can five months really go so quickly? I spent most of my summer at home in Sydney (where it was winter), and another chunk of it driving around the gorgeous American south west. Photos to come. I'm happy to be back in my little kitchen and cooking again (that is, I will be when it gets cool enough to consider turning my oven on).

Honeydew Popsicles

adapted from Martha's honeydew agua fresca recipe

makes 8-10 popsicles

the flesh of one ripe honeydew melon, seeds removed

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup fresh lime juice

In a saucepan, add sugar to 2 cups of water and place over a low heat, stirring continually until the sugar dissolves. Remove the sugar syrup from the heat.

Using a blender or food processor, puree the honeydew in batches until smooth. Place a fine-mesh sieve over a large bowl or jug. Pour the honeydew into the sieve and strain into the bowl. Press on the pulp to extract more juice. Discard pulp.

Mix lime juice with the cooled sugar and water. Add slowly to the honeydew juice, testing for sweetness, and stop when you've reached your desired level. Adjust lime juice if necessary. The sweetness of the popsicles will depend entirely on the sweetness of your honeydew. I only ended up using half of the sugar syrup (I refrigerated the remainder to make more popsicles with) but I want to make sure you have a flexible amount to work with.

Pour honeydew mixture into popsicle moulds. Leave in the freezer for approximately 2 hours, or until the popsicles are semi-frozen (this amount of time may depend on the effectiveness of your freezer), and then insert the sticks/handles. Freeze for another 6 hours or overnight before eating. You'll need to run warm water over the popsicle moulds to extract them.

gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Please make these: they're amazingly good. They're warm with ginger and spice, soft, and they're great as tiny little cakes, which is how I made them. The cream cheese frosting is so phenomenal that I'm going to give it its own post, just so I can find it easily in the future. I took them to a party and let people ice their own cakes; the kids liked them plain, the grown-ups were all over the frosting. One of my friends took the leftover frosting home and "ate it like a pudding".

The original Martha Stewart recipe uses unsulphured molasses, which I don't love; I substituted golden syrup, which still gives a fantastically gingerbready flavour. I know golden syrup is less common in the US, but I've found it for sale in both the groceries stores near me in Austin.



Gingerbread Cupcakes
adapted from Martha Stewart

2 tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
2 1/2 cups all purpose (plain) flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 cup golden syrup
2 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten

Heat oven to 350°F / 175°C. Line muffin tins (mini or otherwise) with paper baking cups, and set aside. In a small saucepan, bring 1 cup water to a boil. In a bowl, combine boiling water and baking soda; set aside. In a large bowl, sift together flour, ground spices, salt, and baking powder; set aside.

In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter until light. Beat in the brown sugar until fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. Beat in the golden syrup, baking-soda mixture, and flour mixture. Beat in the eggs.

Fill the cupcake papers three-quarters full. Bake cupcakes until a toothpick inserted in the center of them comes out clean, about 25 minutes for ordinarily-sized cupcakes, or 15-20 minutes for mini cupcakes. Let cupcakes cool a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.

maple pot de creme

Maple syrup is one of those flavours that is miraculous with everything. Truly - everything. I'm grateful to America for a lot of things (some of my dearest friends, for example), but maple syrup with bacon is very high on the list. I'd never combined these two delicious things until I moved to the US. You might say my life hadn't really begun, and if you were to say that, I might protest only slightly. Part of me would know that was true.

I'd also never eaten pot de crème until my Oregonian friend Michael forced me to (when I say forced, I mean that he very kindly made coffee pot de crème for dessert one frigid New England night, for which I am still grateful). Michael is a poet and a chef, two excellent things to combine (much like maple syrup and bacon).

Pot de crème is really just chilled and flavoured custard. It's full of good, nutritious things, like eggs and cream and milk, and then flavoured with something - often with vanilla, which is probably its most chic incarnation. Because it's the season for it, I chose maple syrup. I served mine with lightly toasted walnuts and blackberries.

I wish I had a photo of how smooth and silky the custard was under that honey-coloured layer. I meant to keep one aside, not only to photograph the next day, but to enjoy. But we ate it. I knew it was wrong, but I was powerless to prevent us.



Maple Pots de Creme
recipe from Eggs on Sunday

1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup maple syrup (Grade B/Dark Amber for best flavour)
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 300°F / 150°C. Place four 3/4-cup ramekins in a metal baking pan and set aside.

In a medium saucepan, bring the cream, maple syrup, and salt to a simmer over medium high heat. While the cream mixture is heating, whisk together the egg yolks and vanilla in a large bowl.

Once the cream comes to a simmer, temper the egg yolks by slowly adding the hot cream mixture, little by little, into the egg yolk mixture and whisking constantly. Once all the cream mixture has been incorporated, strain it through a fine-mesh sieve either back into the pot that you heated the cream in, or into a glass liquid measuring cup.

Divide the mixture among the four ramekins. You’ll bake them in a hot water bath, so pour enough very hot tap water into the baking dish so that it comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins.

Bake in the oven for about 50-60 minutes, or until the pots de creme are set around the edges but still slightly jiggly in the middle. Once they reach this point, remove them from the oven and take the ramekins out of the hot water bath. Let them cool at room temperature (they will continue to set as they do so.)

Makes 4.

chocolate pecan galette

I get to have two Thanksgivings this year, which I think is impressive for someone who isn't even American. First up was Friends Thanksgiving, imported from Montana by dear friends with the motto "all the food and none of the family". It was one enormous, delicious, Thanksgiving-themed pot luck, and dessert was partly my responsibility. Both of my contributions were Australian - a pavlova, which I know is only controversially Australian and which I completely failed to photograph before it vanished, and this chocolate pecan galette, which seems more Franco-American than anything else, but which came from the website I'm going to more than any other for recipes at the moment: Australian Gourmet Traveller.



It doesn't look quite like the pecan pie you'd expect on the Thanksgiving dessert table; more like something in a Parisian patisserie. I wish I had better photos of the finished product, but I'm planning to make it again for real Thanksgiving, so maybe I'll update with something prettier. It's simple to make, too - just store-bought puff pastry (all butter, preferably) encasing a filling of ground pecans and semisweet chocolate. Rich and gorgeous.



Chocolate & Pecan Pie
adapted from Australian Gourmet Traveller

Serves 10

250g pecans
185g dark chocolate (at least 61% cocoa solids), coarsely chopped
25g (1/4 cup) Dutch-process cocoa
200g raw caster sugar (or raw sugar)
100g unsalted butter, softened
5 egg yolks
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 butter puff pastry sheets (375g each)
1 egg, lightly whisked with a splash of water, for egg wash

Process pecans in food processor or blender until finely ground and transfer to a bowl. Process chocolate in food processor or blender until finely ground and add to pecans. Add cocoa, sugar and butter and, using your hands, work butter into dry ingredients until well combined. Add yolks and 1/2 tsp sea salt and mix to combine. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled (at least 1 hour, or overnight).

Line an oven sheet with baking paper. Place one sheet of pastry on the baking paper. Shape the chocolate mixture into a disc, then place it in the middle of the pastry. Use your hands to shape mixture into a 22cm / 9in diameter dome. Brush pastry edges with egg wash, then cover with the remaining pastry sheet. Trim pastry to a 25cm / 10in circle, folding edges and pressing to seal. Refrigerate until chilled, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 220°C / 425°F. Pierce a small hole in the pastry top for steam to escape, then use a sharp knife to score a pinwheel pattern on top of the galette. Brush with remaining eggwash. Bake until golden and puffed, 20-25 minutes. Cool on a tray for 20 minutes, then serve with double cream or vanilla ice cream.

banana maple upside-down puddings

November in Texas, it turns out, makes up for August in Texas. It's warm and sunny every day, as opposed to infernal and sunny every day. Trees are still green; birds are arriving from the north; I'm not even close to thinking about coats and scarves. All of this is wonderful, and I love it, but it means I have no business making autumnal, comforting things like these banana-maple upside-down puddings. But it's just that this time last year I was in chilly New Hampshire, walking in the turning woods and buying maple syrup from the farmer's market and roasting things and drinking tea, and I sort of miss it.

So here are some autumnal/fallish puddings for you, sweet with caramelised maple syrup but ever so slightly summery with bananas. Maple syrup and bananas are so extraordinarily tasty together, but then, maple syrup is extraordinarily tasty with everything.









Banana Maple Upside-Down Puddings
adapted from Australian Gourmet Traveller

Serves 6

200 ml maple syrup
160g soft butter
80ml (1/3 cup) pouring cream (heavy cream)
3 ripe bananas, peeled
1 tsp lemon juice
220g (1 cup) raw caster sugar (or just raw sugar)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour
1 tsp bi-carbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
80ml (1/3 cup) milk

Cook maple syrup in a saucepan over medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes or until starting to caramelise, add 35g butter and all the cream and swirl to combine. Pour 2 tbsp of maple-caramel into bases of six 1-cup capacity metal darioles, swirling to coat sides slightly and reserving remaining caramel mixture. Thinly slice 1 banana widthways, layer slices over caramel and set aside.

Preheat oven to 160°C / 320°F. Using a fork, coarsely mash remaining bananas with lemon juice, to yield 3/4 cup, and set aside. Using an electric mixer, beat remaining butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add eggs, mashed banana and vanilla extract and beat to combine. Sieve over flour, bi-carbonate of soda and cinnamon, stir to combine, add milk and mix until smooth.

Divide pudding mixture into moulds to 1.5cm below rims (there may be a little mixture left over), smoothing tops, and bake for 20-25 minutes or until risen and firm to the touch. Unmould immediately onto serving plates, drizzle over reserved maple-caramel and serve with double cream or ice cream.

vanilla & raspberry cheesecake tart

Three months since posting! The time has flown, which I guess it has a habit of doing when you move to another city and start graduate school. At first I had no time to cook; now I have time to cook but no time to post; soon, I hope, everything's going to settle down and I'll have time for everything (also, I should point out, there's a lot more to do - and eat - in Austin than there was in small town New Hampshire).

So, to apologise for my absence, I'm giving you this delicious object: Tamasin Day-Lewis's raspberry and vanilla cheesecake tart. It isn't a cheescake, except that it is; it's a cheesetart, which is a grown-up kind of cheesecake: crumbless, slender, elegant, and very, very good to eat.






Raspberry & Vanilla Cheesecake Tart
adapted from Tamasin's Kitchen Classics, by Tamasin Day-Lewis

For the shortcrust pastry:

170g / 6oz plain white flour
pinch of sea salt
85g / 3oz unsalted butter, cold, chopped into small pieces
1-2 tbsp ice cold water
2 tbsp sugar

For the filling:

140g / 5oz cream cheese, room temperature
150ml / 5 fl oz double (heavy) cream
1 heaped tbsp unflavoured Greek yoghurt
3 small eggs and 2 egg yolks
1/2 vanilla pod, the seeds scooped out from the split pods with a teaspoon
340g / 12 oz raspberries

Sift the flour into a large bowl with the salt and sugar, add the chopped butter, and work as briskly as you can to rub the fat into the flour. Use the tips of your fingers only, or a pastry cutter. Add the water bit by bit until the mixture coheres into a ball - you may not need to use all the water, and remember that the more you use, the more the pastry will shrink when you bake it blind. Form the pastry into a disc, wrap it in plastic, and chill it in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Flour your work surface, your hands and a rolling pin. Roll the pastry out to fit a 20cm / 8in tart tin. Grease the tart tin, then lift the pastry with the rolling pin and place it in the tin. Don't stretch it, or it will shrink back. Chill for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F / gas 6. Tear off a piece of greaseproof paper a little larger than the tart tin and place it over the pastry. Cover the paper with a layer of dried beans or baking weights. Place in the oven for 15 minutes, then remove the paper and beans and prick the base of the pastry. Return the tart to the oven for 5-10 minutes to dry the pastry base.

Meanwhile, assemble and make the filling. Turn the oven down to 180°C / 350°F / gas 4. Scrape the cream cheese into a bowl and add the cream, yoghurt, eggs and yolks, and vanilla to the bowl. Whisk all together until smooth. Scatter the raspberries over the base of the pastry shell in a single layer, then scrape over the cheesecake mix. Bake for about 45 minutes until golden and set. Cool on a rack.

apple & blueberry shortcake

One of my dearest friends turns 30 today, and so, because I can't be there to celebrate with him, I set out this afternoon to make him an e-cake. Really, if I were making a cake for this friend, knowing he would eat it, it would be something slim and elegant, dark with the darkest of chocolate, a touch of alcohol, maybe the faintest taste of orange. But since he's not here, I ended up with this instead: an apple and blueberry shortcake that's really, let's face it, a pie.

It's Bill Granger's fault that I started out making a cake and ended up with a pie, but it would be ungracious of me to complain, because this cake/pie is so very good. In fact, now that I think further on the issue of the cake/pie, the final effect is something more like an enormous, soft and delicious cookie stuffed with stewed apple and blueberries. I'm certain my friend would approve, and so I offer it to him with love: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!



I was halfway through making this when I remembered that the springform cake pan I assumed I had ready to use was actually in storage a few thousand miles away. So I made mine a little more free-form, just laying baking paper down on a flat baking sheet and forming the shortcake on top of that. I'm sure using the tin, as Granger's recipe instructs, would result in a slightly more cake-like cake - I'm certain mine spread more than it might have otherwise, resulting in the (I think, rather charming) globular effect on top. (The person I did share this cake with, who is not celebrating a birthday today, referred to these with affection as the cake's "boobs". I was reminded of this statue.)



Apple & Blueberry Shortcake
from Bill's Food, by Bill Granger*

4 large Granny Smith apples
finely grated zest from 1 lemon
2 tbsp sugar
125g (4 1/2 oz) unsalted butter
125g (1/2 cup) caster (superfine) sugar
1 egg
185g (1 1/2 cups) plain (all-purpose) flour
1 tsp baking powder
155g (1 cup) blueberries
demerara or granulated sugar, for sprinkling

Peel and core the apples, then cut into about 16 slices. Put the apples, lemon zest, the 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 2 tablespoons of water into a medium saucepan, then cover and stew over a low heat for about 10 minutes, until the apples are soft but not mushy. Allow to cool.

Cream the butter and caster sugar together in a bowl until fluffy and smooth. Add the egg and mix well. Sift the flour and baking baking powder into the mixture and stir until combined. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth. Divide into two and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F / gas 4. Roll each half of cake dough into a circle approximately 22cm (8 1/2 inch) across. Press one circle into a 24cm (9 inch) non-stick springform cake tin. Spread the apples over the dough, leaving a small border around the edge. Sprinkle with blueberries. Place the other round of dough on top and press the edges together. Brush with water and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, then allow to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before removing. Serve with cream or vanilla ice cream. Serves 8 to 10.


* I actually just remembered that this book was a gift from my birthday friend! That was a lovely accident.

strawberries in moscatel with almond shortbread

Moscatel is the name of the Spanish sweet wine made from the muscat grape. Cleopatra drank wine of the muscat grape, and so did the mourners at the funeral of King Midas. And I drank it last night while eating moscatel-soaked strawberries with thick cream and thin almond cookies.

The strawberries recipe is from Sam and Sam Clark's wonderful Moro cookbook. I've recently been reunited with most of my cookbooks, which lived in storage for over 3 years, and this is probably the one I'm most excited to see again. I inherited my bottle of moscatel from the previous residents of the house I'm staying in and was wondering what to do with it when I found this recipe in Moro; between the moscatel and the current glut of British strawberries, it seemed just right.

Moscatel is a sweet wine, aromatic but not cloying. It forms an amber pool around the strawberries, which soften and swell. The Clarks serve their boozy berries with Moorish sandcakes, but I experimented with a simpler almond shortbread. The best thing was to spoon the strawberries onto the shortbread cookies, splodge on some cream, and eat, but I'm sure there are more delicate ways of managing. This makes too many cookies, but they're so tasty you won't mind.





The light situation in this house isn't fantastic; it's old and stone with deep-set windows, so there's no happy medium between bright bright windowsills and too-dark rooms. This is cosy and lovely for living and bad for photographing food, so I'm thinking of these photos as moody and atmospheric and reassuring myself that everyone knows what a bowl of strawberries looks like...



Strawberries in Moscatel
adapted from Sam & Sam Clark, Moro

300g strawberries, washed, drained and stalks removed
140ml Moscatel Málaga wine or Moscatel sherry
1 level tbsp icing/confectioner's sugar

Mix the strawberries with the Moscatel and icing/confectioner's sugar to taste, and marinate in the fridge for a few hours, covered. You can slice your strawberries before or after marinating, or leave them whole. Serve chilled. Serves 2-4, depending on large you want portions to be; if you want to increase the number of strawberries, you won't need much more wine than this.


Almond Cookies*

170g unsalted butter
115g caster sugar (ordinary granulated sugar will also be fine)
140g plain flour
50g ground almonds / almond meal
a pinch of salt
sugar for sprinkling - demerara or ordinary granulated

Place the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Using a hand-held mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until well combined. Sift the flour, ground almonds / almond meal and salt into a separate bowl and mix well, then add to the butter and sugar mixture. Mix together on a low speed until the dough comes together - this won't take long. Don't over-mix. Turn out onto a surface dusted with flour and form a flat disc. Wrap this disc in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350°F / 180°C / gas mark 4. Line a baking sheet with baking paper.

Placed the chilled disc on a floured surface and roll out until about half a centimetre thick (you don't need to be too precise, but if the cookies are too thin, they'll spread). Use a cookie cutter to stamp out circles and transfer them onto the baking sheet. You'll probably need to use a metal spatula to transfer them - the dough softens very quickly. Allow the cookies a little room to expand.

Sprinkle the cookies with a little sugar, then bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the edges begin to brown. Cool to room temperature. Makes approx. 24 cookies.


* The metric measurements of this recipe reflect my newest toy, a set of electric scales. I'm sorry not to have included cup measurements for US readers, and promise to try and do so in the future, but I got so carried away by the perfection of measuring to within a gram that I didn't work out the equivalents.

white chocolate & pecan blondies

The last thing I cooked in my New Hampshire kitchen before leaving it forever: Nigella Lawson's white chocolate blondies. She uses macadamia nuts, but I used pecans because that's what I had left in my cupboard. There's more to recommend the pecans than my moving-house expediency, however. I like both nut combinations; the pecans, softer than macadamias and a little sweet, complement the fudgy white chocolate really well.

I'm in England now, spending the summer in the Lake District, with strawberries growing in my garden and food to plan for hikes and picnics and road trips to Scotland, among other adventures. Oh, these hills! This place is almost ludicrously lovely.

White Chocolate & Pecan Blondies

adapted from Nigella Lawson, How to be a Domestic Goddess

125 g unsalted butter (this will be just over 1 stick)
250g white chocolate, cut into chunks, or small chips
4 large eggs
1 tsp salt
350g caster/superfine sugar (ordinary granulated sugar will also still work)
2 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain (all-purpose) flour
250g pecans, roughly chopped

25 x 20 x 5cm brownie tin, buttered

Preheat the oven to 340°F / 170°C / gas mark 3. Melt the butter and chocolate either in a microwave or a double boiler. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the salt until light and beginning to whoosh up in volume, then add the sugar and the vanilla, and continue beating until really creamy and thick. Beat in the slightly cooled chocolate mixture and then add the flour and nuts, folding in gently. Pour into your prepared tin and cook for 35 minutes or until set on top and gooey in the middle. Leave for 3-5 minutes before cutting into small squares.

strawberry galette

Hooray for the lo-fi fruit tart, with pastry rolled out by a gin bottle and no need for tart pans or pie dishes. Because almost all my kitchen equipment is in storage, I made this pastry with nothing more complicated than a cheese grater. And the result is such a simple marriage of taste: sweet strawberries, buttery pastry. Like all fruit pies, it's best eaten hot with something creamy and cold.



I look back at the time when I never made my own pie and tart crusts because I thought you needed a food processor to do it, and think sadly of everything I missed out on. One day, yes, I'll buy a food processor (one day when I stop moving every 7 or 8 months, which will be very soon), but won't it be nice to know I can do all this by hand if I want to? I do recommend a rolling pin over a gin bottle, however, even when it's a beautiful brown Hendrick's one (alas, empty of gin). I know I can manage thinner pastry and neater edges than these, but at the same time, the point of a free-form pie is to look artless and comfy.



I make pastry by freezing the butter, still in stick form, and then grating it while frozen on the larger round holes of a cheese grater. Lately I've been using the pâte brisée recipe on Simply Recipes; I've re-written it here only to give instructions for making it by hand. To use a food processor, follow the link to the recipe on Elise's site.



Strawberry Galette

For the strawberry filling:
adapted from here

1 punnet strawberries (4-5 oz)
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp cornflour (cornstarch)
a squeeze of lemon juice

For the pastry (from Simply Recipes):
1 1/4 cups all-purpose (plain) flour, plus extra for rolling
8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, frozen (in the freezer for at least half an hour)
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp sugar
2 to 5 tbsp ice water, very cold

Also: a little extra sugar, and a little butter

To make the pastry: grate the butter on the larger round holes of a cheese grater. Return the grated butter to the freezer for 20 minutes or so, to chill again.

In a large bowl, combine flour, salt and sugar. Add frozen, grated buter and work into the dry ingredients very briefly with your hands. Some of the flakes of butter should stay large, and others will be incorporated into the flour; you want it to reach the texture of oatmeal, and pieces of butter should still be visible in the finished pastry (that's what makes it so flaky when cooked).

Add the ice water one tablespoon at a time, mixing very briefly between tablespoons. If you pinch some of the crumbly dough and it holds together, it's ready, if not, add a little more water and pulse again. You may not need to use all 4 tablespoons of water.

Remove dough from bowl and place on a clean surface. Carefully shape into a disc. Don't over-knead; it just needs to come together enough to hold a circular shape. Sprinkle the disc with a little flour on all sides. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour.

Macerate the strawberries: remove the leaves from the strawberries, then slice. Place them in a bowl with the sugar and cornflour, squeeze over a little lemon juice, and stir everything together. Leave for half an hour to an hour, until the strawberries are sitting in lots of pink, sugary juice.

Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C. Line a baking tray/cookie tin with baking paper.

Remove the pastry from the fridge and let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes, until it's easy to roll out. On a clean, floured surface, roll the pastry into a rough circle, about 1/8 inch thick (about 3 mm). (If, like me, you're making 2 small pies, divide the pastry in 2 and roll separately.) I found it easiest to transfer the rolled out pastry onto the baking tray at this point. Put the strawberries in a pile in the middle of the pastry circle, bringing as little of their juice with them as possible*, and leaving a border of about 3 inches around the edges for a large pie, or 1.5 inches for 2 smaller ones. Fold the pastry up around the strawberries, pleating as you go, so that a central area of fruit remains uncovered. Press down on the pastry folds to stop them from separating in the oven. Sprinkle the pastry with a little sugar, and dot the top of the strawberries with a little butter, no more than half a tablespoon.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the pastry is golden. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or thick cream. The juice will have bubbled up and run down the sides the sides of the galette, so be careful when lifting and serving.

* The strawberries will produce lots of juice while baking, so don't put any extra into the pie. I stirred the leftover juice into Greek yoghurt.

raspberry & lemon curd tart

Here's what I made with my lemon meringue tartlet leftovers: a raspberry and lemon curd tart. There's no real recipe - I used the leftover pastry, and extended the lemon curd by blending and straining some frozen raspberries and mixing them in - but I wanted to show you, because the colour is so pretty. This would have been lovely as small bites as well; it also cheekily meant I could cook for two events (with some overlapping guests) using the one recipe.

I think the combination of lemon and raspberry isn't used often enough, and I'm going to play around with a proper version of this tart in the summer, when I have fresh raspberries.

lemon meringue tartlets

I like finger food at parties; I like eating it, and I like making it. It makes everything seem a little more festive. Also, small food, like small animals, brings out people's parental instincts. They're evolutionarily well disposed toward it. These little lemon meringue pies, for example, were greeted with the admiring cries usually reserved for small babies.

The brown sugar pastry crust is as easy to mix as cookie dough, and as pliant and forgiving to work with. The lemon curd filling comes together quickly in a saucepan. It's all topped with soft Italian meringue and waved under a hot broiler for a few seconds to caramelize. And then, crowded all together on a big plate, they look burnished and beautiful. I wish I had more photos of how pretty they are, but I was running late and the light was failing...the one above was a solitary little guy I rescued from party consumption to photograph the next day (and then eat!).




I made 24 tartlets (the capacity of my mini muffin pan), and could have made at least half as many more, but used my excess for something else I'll show you soon. If you're not excited by the idea of cutting out dozens of squares of baking paper and filling them laboriously with beans, you could make larger tarts, and even one large tart; all that would change is the amount of time the pastry needs to spend in the oven, in the second stage of blind baking. If you need to cook your pastry for longer, then make sure you keep the edges from browning by covering them with strips of tinfoil.



Lemon Meringue Tartlets
adapted from Gourmet and Australian Gourmet Traveller

For the pastry:
100g soft unsalted butter
100g light brown sugar
2 eggs
270g plain flour

For the lemon curd filling:
1 cup sugar
6 tbsp cornstarch/cornflour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup water
1/2 cup milk
4 large egg yolks
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tsp freshly grated unwaxed lemon zest

For the meringue:
110g (1/2 cup) caster/superfine sugar
55g (1/4 cup) golden caster sugar or demerara sugar*
2 egg whites

To make the pastry, beat butter and brown sugar using an electric mixer until pale, about 5 minutes, then add eggs and beat to combine. Add flour, beat until just combined, turn onto a lightly floured work surface, form into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.

To make the lemon curd filling, whisk the sugar, cornstarch and salt together in a heavy saucepan. Gradually whisk in water and milk, whisking until cornstarch is dissolved. In a bowl whisk together egg yolks. Cook milk mixture over moderate heat, whisking, until it comes to a boil. Gradually whisk about 1 cup milk mixture into yolks, and then whisk the entire yolk mixture into the rest of the milk mixture. Simmer mixture, whisking, 3 minutes. Your curd should have thickened by now - if not, continue cooking and whisking until it does. Remove pan from heat and whisk in butter, lemon juice, and zest, until butter is melted. Cover surface of filling with plastic wrap.

Butter a mini muffin pan. Roll pastry on a lightly floured surface to 2mm thick. Cut out circles to fit the tart pan you're using - for my mini muffin pan, that was just over 2 inches. Line the mini muffin indentations with pastry circles, neaten the edges and trim so they're level with, or just above, the top of the pan, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Line pastry-lined muffin pan with baking paper, weigh down with pastry weights, rice or dry beans and bake for 10 minutes, then remove paper and pastry weights and bake for another 10 minutes or until crisp. Cool for 10 minutes, then spoon in the lemon curd, filling each cup level, and set aside.

To make the meringue, combine sugars and 1/4 cup water in a heavy-based saucepan and stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to high and cook until syrup reaches 115°C/240°F on a sugar/candy thermometer, then remove from heat. Meanwhile, using an electric mixer, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form, then, with motor running, very slowly add hot syrup and whisk for 5 minutes. Spoon or pipe meringue over lemon curd, forming into peaks. Place pies under a hot grill/broiler for a few seconds until meringue is golden (watch carefully - they could burn very quickly) or use a blowtorch to brown meringue lightly. The tarts keep well in the fridge, but the longer you leave before serving, the softer the meringue and the pastry will get.


* If you don't have either of these sugars, it's fine to use caster/superfine for the whole amount of sugar.

turkish yoghurt cake with stewed rhubarb

This is like cheesecake, only yoghurt-y. I hope that appeals to you; I find it irresistable. Like many good things to eat, it's Turkish in origin. It's light and creamy with a hint of lemon, and it looks elegant and simple on the plate. Easy dinner party food. I served it cold from the fridge and it was fantastic; it was even better later, at room temperature.





When I was young, the back of our family fridge was occupied frequently by a huge jar of swampy pink juice. If you looked hard, turning the jar this way and that, then stalks of my grandmother's home-grown rhubarb would float out of the murk. I hated rhubarb (or at least, I thought I did). My father would spoon it out of the jar into a bowl and eat it with ice cream, to his children's slightly pitying disgust. Now I love it. I'm so happy to see it at the market in spring, looking sort of like camp celery.

This recipe for stewed rhubarb pairs it with ginger, and the results are good enough to eat on their own. I kept spooning it out of the pan - the sugary pink juices are wonderful. This same pink, gingery sweetness is a great foil to the slight tartness of the yoghurt cake. When rhubarbs aren't in season, I'd serve the cake with an orange blossom syrup, or some dried figs poached in honey.





Turkish Yoghurt Cake
from Claudia Roden, Arabesque (US, UK)

4 large eggs, separated
1/2 cup superfine (caster) sugar
3 tbsp all-purpose (plain) flour
1 2/3 cup strained Greek-style yoghurt
grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
juice of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 350°F / 175°C.

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar to a thick, pale cream. Beat in the flour, then the yoghurt, lemon zest, and lemon juice until it is thoroughly blended. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the yoghurt mixture. Pour this into a round, nonstick baking tin (about 9 inches in diameter), greased with butter.

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until the top is brown. It will puff up like a soufflé and then subside. Turn out onto a serving plate, and serve warm or cold.

Stewed Rhubarb with Ginger
adapted from Simply Recipes*

3 cups rhubarb stalks (about 4 stalks), green leaves discarded, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1/3 cup sugar
zest of one orange
2 tbsp minced candied ginger
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp butter

Preheat the oven to 350°F / 175°C. (This could easily be prepared on the stovetop - and in that way, I suppose, would be properly stewed - but if you're making it together with the yoghurt cake, it makes sense to cook them in the oven together.)

Combine the rhubarb, sugar, orange zest, vanilla and ginger in a lightly buttered baking pan and allow to macerate for 15 minutes. Cut the butter into small pieces and dot over the surface of the fruit. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the rhubarb is soft.

blackberry & apple cobbler

I'll be honest right away and say that I don't know exactly what a cobbler is (or a grunt, or a slump, or a buckle - but they all sound amazing). I know it has something to do with fruit and something to do with a biscuit/scone dough that co-exists with the fruit. In America, it seems, the fruit sits on top of the dough, which then puffs up around it during cooking to form a solid mass of cakey, cobbler-y goodness. In England, apparently, a cobbler involves a dough that sits on top of the ingredients (which are often savoury); this dough isn't left as one mass, but is cut out into separate shapes. And that's the kind of cobbler I've made, and eaten with great satisfaction: a gooey, aromatic, dark pink soup of softened apples and blackberries, topped by cinnamon-spiked scones, which in turn are sprinkled with demerara sugar.



This recipe was enough for me to make four individual cobblers. Officially the dough should be shaped into rounds and overlapped over the fruit, but I liked shaping mine into leaves. Something fantastic happened to the scone-leaves during cooking: they puffed up and became crunchy with the sugar on top, but almost melted into the fruit underneath.



Blackberry & Apple Cobbler
Adapted from here

Serves 4

For the fruit filling:
700g cooking apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
25g butter, melted
4 tbsp caster/superfine sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
225g blackberries

For the cobbler topping:
225g self raising flour (or 225g plain flour plus 2.5 tbsp baking powder)
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
a pinch of salt
100g cold butter, diced
50g caster/superfine sugar
5 tbsp semi-skimmed milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tbsp demerara or turbinado sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F. Put the apple slices and blackberries in a bowl and drizzle over the melted butter. Sprinkle with the sugar and lemon juice, then mix together to coat the fruit. Pour the fruit into a well-buttered, deep ovenproof dish (about 1.5 litre capacity).

To make the cobbler topping, sift the flour, cinnamon and salt into a mixing bowl. Add the butter and rub in using your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs (this could also be done using the pastry blade on a food processor). Stir in the caster sugar.

Reserve 1 tbsp of the milk, then mix the rest with the egg and add to the dry ingredients. Stir together with a round bladed knife or fork to make a soft dough. Stop stirring as soon as the dough comes together, then lightly knead on a floured surface for a few seconds until smooth.

Roll out the dough to 1cm thick (just under half an inch) and cut into about twelve 4cm (2.5 inch) rounds (or use a cookie cutter to shape them, as I did). Arrange the scones, overlapping as necessary, on top of the fruit, brush with the reserved milk and sprinkle with the demerara or turbinado sugar. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

Reduce the oven temperature to 180°C / 350°F and continue to bake for another 20 minutes or until the scones are cooked and golden brown and the fruit is tender. Serve hot or warm.

brown bread ice cream

I first ate brown bread ice cream in Cambridge, England, in the dining hall of a college famous for its ice cream varieties. Brown bread isn't the most auspicious of flavourings, not in a world that includes chocolate and fig and pistachio, but somehow, once caramelised with sugar and mixed in with cream and vanilla and egg, it becomes almost toffee-like, and incredibly good.



The history of brown bread ice cream is a little confused: both Ireland and England claim it as their own. Either way, people started eating it in the nineteenth century. It's mentioned in Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book, published in England in 1894 (that version includes brandy, which sounds like a good idea to me).

This recipe doesn't use an ice cream maker, but the result is still smooth and creamy - the very best texture I've seen from a non-machine made ice cream. It's almost more like a frozen custard.



Brown Bread Ice Cream
from Epicurious

1 cup crumbs from brown soda bread or crustless whole wheat bread, preferably a little stale
8 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp (packed) dark brown sugar
2/3 cup whole milk
1 3-inch piece vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 large egg yolks
1 1/3 cups chilled whipping cream

Preheat oven to 375°F / 190°C. Line baking sheet with foil; butter foil. Mix breadcrumbs, 3 tbsp sugar and all the brown sugar in a medium bowl. Scatter over prepared baking sheet. Bake until sugar begins to melt and crumbs are slightly darker, stirring crumbs occasionally with metal spatula to prevent sticking, about 10 minutes. Transfer breadcrumbs to a bowl and cool. Break crumbs into small pieces.

Place milk in medium saucepan. Scrape in seeds from vanilla bean; add bean. Bring to simmer. Remove from heat and let steep 30 minutes.

Whisk egg yolks and 5 tbsp sugar in a large bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in milk mixture. Return mixture to same saucepan. Stir over low heat until custard thickens and leaves path on back of spoon when finger is drawn across, about 5 minutes (do not boil). Strain into small bowl. Chill custard until cold, stirring occasionally, 1 hour.

Beat whipping cream in large bowl until firm peaks form. Fold custard into cream. Gently fold into breadcrumbs. Transfer to covered containers and freeze. Can be prepared 3 days ahead. Keep frozen.