Nursery Rhymes

I've discovered a lovely new cake and baking blog.  See below.

http://gingerbreadlad.blogspot.co.uk/

 I found this via the blog of a reading and writing site, The Arvon Foundation.

As with another of my favourites, the Caked Crusader , the writing and the pictures are superb, and I totally trust the recipes. (I seldom make cakes these days, but the ones I have made from CC's blog have received universal praise and approval).

I haven't yet tried anything from GBL, but found his post on Yorkshire Curd Tart fascinating because it tells you how to make your own curds. 

As follows:

Make the curds by gently heating the milk, and once it reaches a steady boil add the lemon juice. Turn down the heat and watch the curds form, you can gently stir to help steady it along. Once you have lumps floating in liquid take off the heat and leave to cool. Drain the liquid (which is the whey) through a tea towel over a container so that you catch the curds in the tea towel and can keep the whey. Allow to strain in the fridge over night.


This is useful, because I have, on the few occasions when I have bought curd cheese, been disappointed with the results.

It is also interesting because it brings a new perspective on the old nursery rhyme, Little Miss Muffet.  (Who, it will be remembered, sat on a tuffet, "eating her curds and whey").

While on the subject of Nursery Rhymes, I had sudden insight moment this morning. 

I have been up since 5.30 am, and done washing, drying, ironing, stripping and remaking bed, plus emptying bins and sorting all recycling, all before 8.00 am.


I know who the elves were, in "The Elves and the Shoemaker".  It was the shoemaker's wife or his mum,  of course.  Who did all the work before the shoemaker got up.

Husband and Cake

A post on Caked Crusader has led my mind to dwell on the subject of husbands and cake.  I have been married to my husband for a long time, and we have been a couple for 35 years. 

One event in particular sticks out in my mind, on the subject of husband and cake.

Very early on, when we bought our first house together, we were quite naive and romantic.  We bought an old stone house which looked very like the Bronte's parsonage in Haworth.  The house was in a suburb of Leeds which was very unfashionable then, and had structural problems, which is why we got it quite cheap.

One of the problems was that it was absolutely freezing cold.  It had no loft insulation, and no central heating.  There were also mice.  Even our house was warmer for the mice than a hilltop between Leeds and Bradford in winter.

The first year we were there, I went to some considerable trouble to make a Christmas cake.  I was quite proud of this, not being a particularly domesticated young woman in those days.  (I remember scoffing when I first read Shirley Conran's book "Superwoman", that this book was" all about housework", and I did not intend to do any!)

Husband, looking for anything near to hand to put into a mousetrap he was constructing, broke off a corner of the beautiful untouched cake I had made, thus ruining it for icing.

It took about twenty years for me to get over this and these days, I do not make a Christmas cake.  He does, or we don't have one.

Cake Recipe

Since it is a holiday weekend,  I break my rule just this once, and post a cake recipe.

I do not hope to compete with http://thecakedcrusader.blogspot.co.uk/, but as two people have recently asked for this recipe, here it is.

Chocolate Yoghurt Cake
(popular with extremely hungry children and teenagers, and useful for storing in the freezer and eating straight from frozen, in a cake emergency situation).

First find a largish square roasting tin, about 28 by 28 cm,  5cm deep.  Grease and line with baking parchment, leaving a "sill" at each end to lift the cake out.

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 3. or usual electrical equivalents.

Assemble the following:
100 ml of  light vegetable oil
A 500 gram pot of natural full-fat yogurt
350 grams of caster sugar
5 medium or 4 large eggs
5 tablespoons of golden syrup and 5 tablespoons of demerara sugar
450 grams of self-raising flour
100 gm cocoa powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon of salt.

Place oil, yoghurt, golden syrup, sugar and eggs in a mixing bowl and beat well.  Sift the flour, cocoa powder, bicarb of soda and salt into the bowl and mix well. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 1.5 to 1.75 hours.  Lift out using the paper edges and leave to cool before cutting into squares.

This is nice with creme fraiche or double cream.  Melted chocolate icing is an enhancement, but not essential.

Happy eating!

Cake goes with Tea

And, of course, the natural accompaniment to tea, is cake.

Because I have promised myself to stick to the main theme here, I decided against writing out a favourite recipe, or displaying a picture of one I have made (http://thecakedcrusader.blogspot.com/)  does it so much better than I could ever do!).

I am instead displaying some pages from a favourite old book of mine.  This book was one of the first things I bought when I started out, forty years ago, as a student at the University of York,  in 1972. 

You can see from the stains on the pages how old and well-loved this book is.  Even though I have never actually made the recipes on this page.

Here is the cover....

Aforementioned Caked Crusader has an ambitious but worthy aim to publish a book of recipes one from each county in England, and specifies the City of York as a separate item.

 CC, if you would like the full recipe for any of the above, just ask, and I will copy it out for you! 

Good Things Happen in Threes

#1 
We opened our porch door this morning to find a Christmas card in the letter box.  Nothing unusual you might think in that.  "We have received all the cards we normally do from our neighbours," I told hub.  "Then who can this be from?"  It was from the Muslim family who moved this year into the end house.  We were so touched.  That they could find the time and interest to remember OUR annual celebration.  (We barely know what theirs is - something in November?)  That they wanted to. Their generosity of feeling.

#2
After Christmas lunch, elder daughter fetched out her violin and played some Christmas carols in the dining room.  What joy. 

When we had the sitting room redecorated two years ago, we got rid of the piano, and since then there has been no  music at Christmas. 
Now, daughter has brought music back into the house.  I am overjoyed.

Next, mother-in-law adds another layer of emotion to the mix.  She reminisces about the day that elder daughter first showed an interest in music, asking to learn the recorder.  This was in a holiday cottage twenty years ago, when both parents-in-law used to come on holiday with us.  I do remember the tune I taught her was "Bee, bee, Busy bee, busy, busy, busy bee" - all on one note, the note B.  It was indeed the date that daughter first started to learn music. Being one of the parties, I don't have a picture of the scene in my head.  Granny does, and tells us.  I am moved by her recollections, and dumbfounded that she can still see it as clearly as the day it happened.  Wish we had a video-camera.  But Granny has the picture locked in her memory.


#3
The books I gave for Christmas have given delight and interest.  Two of them were second-hand but didn't look it.  Elder daughter received "Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me" and read it for hours.  I gave younger daughter a book about the Peak District, but it was Auntie (hub's sister) and her partner who pored over it.  They live in Manchester, and have done many of the walks pictured, and even met one of the famous walkers who opened up Kinder Scout and started the Rambling Association.  No-one said anything about the books being less than absolutely pristine, although I think they might have suspected something.

Hub received his own version of a "pre-owned" book.  Some old person in Granny's circle was given a Nigella cookbook.  No longer interested in cooking, she donated it to a raffle.  Granny's best friend, (90), won the raffle, and being too old to cook, passed it to Granny, who passed it to Hub.  I love it - appears to be a mixture of "Express", "Comfort Food" and "Cakes".  Have looked at every recipe and even my jaded and worn-out attitude to cooking has received a jolt of inspiration.  Particularly interested in the vivid green marshmallow pie.

So, three good things have happened today, and three books have brought pleasure.  Ending on cake and books, just as it should be.