a chocolate cake Sky can eat

Dairy free cakes are fairly easy to make, but dairy free chocolate cake with real chocolate in it is more of a challenge. This is a recipe for a vegan chocolate cake based on Anna Jones’ recipe that was in the Guardian about 6 years ago. I thought I’d cut it out and kept it, but I can’t find it so each time I want to make the cake I have to google the recipe. You’d have thought I’d have written it down before now.

Start with the icing. Last time I made it was glossy and spreadable. This time I followed the recipe which calls for 150 grams of chocolate. When I’d made it before I’d only used one bar of chocolate which weighed about 80 grams. However, 150 grams was too much this time and my icing split. I added more hot water bit by bit until it resolved itself in much the same way you’d use cream to rescue a split ganache. The result wasn’t shiny though.

To make the icing, put 50 grams of soft brown sugar, 60 mls of water, 75 mls of coconut oil and a tablespoon of cocoa powder into a saucepan. Heat slowly stirring all the time until the oil has melted and the sugar isn’t grainy. Don’t let it boil. Remove from the heat and 80 grams of finely chopped, at least 70% cocoa solids, dairy free chocolate. (I used “The Dark Side” chocolate made by Conscious which is 85% cocoa solids, dairy and soya free, sweetened with coconut blossom and comes in 60 gram bars.) Put the icing aside somewhere cool while you line an 8″ x 8″ square cake tin with baking parchment – the cake is runny so the tin needs to be watertight – then whisk the icing and leave it somewhere cold to cool.

To make the cake, put 250g self raising flour, 75g cocoa, a good pinch of salt and a good pinch of bicarbonate of soda into a bowl and stir it all together really well with a fork. Then put 375 ml of just boiled water into another bowl or large jug and add 250 grams of sugar – I used a mix of dark soft brown sugar and demerara – and 1.5 tsp vinegar. Stir till it’s all dissolved. Add the wet mix to the dry and pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 30 minutes at about 180c. It’ll look shiny and cooked when it’s done.

By the time the cake was cooked, Rella, Sparky, Flossie and Pixie had arrived. The icing was spreadable and there was just time for Flossie to decorate the cake with blueberries, and lick the icing bowl before Halo, Manf, Rosie and Sky descended to meet the new arrival.

puff pastry pie

It’s often a challenge to find lovely things that Sky can eat, especially if you want to eat out, because she can’t eat dairy or soya. A simple sandwich becomes a complicated thing because a lot of bread has soya in it or has a “may contain” warning for dairy products. Halo is well versed in sorting out packed lunches for Sky, but when they come here it’s nice to all eat the same things together. One of these things is a puff pastry pie, which, if made with Jus-Roll puff pastry, has no dairy or soya in it. The last time Rosie and Sky were here, we made such a pie. “I help you, Nan”, said Sky so we started with a courgette. I sliced it and Sky chopped the slices in pieces. Then we moved onto mushrooms which were softer so Sky chopped these all by herself. She was very thorough and the pieces got smaller and smaller until I felt we ought to cook them. At this point, Sky decided she wanted to wash up and spent quite a lot of time doing this.

I cooked the courgettes and the mushrooms in a splash of olive oil with some garlic until everything was very soft and put it to one side to cool while I rolled out the puff pastry into two circles – Sky was still busy washing up. I had some Violife dairy free cream cheese to add to the cooled courgette mixture and I wasn’t sure how it would taste, but Sky helped me mix everything together, spread it over one circle, put the other circle on the top and then licked the spoon. We pressed a glass into the middle and then cut lines almost to the circle making 12 sections. Two sections at a time were twisted together to make a sun shape and the whole lot was brushed with beaten egg and cooked. When it came out of the oven, it looked delicious – well risen and nicely brown. I forgot to take a photo. We had salad, broccoli and some pasta with it for good measure and the pie tasted as delicious as it looked. “Are you going to eat some?” I asked Sky who is not usually a fussy eater. “No thank you.” she said. Oh well.

They’re all coming here tomorrow for a flying visit to meet Flossie’s new baby brother, Pixie, who was born a few days ago. It’ll be lovely – and we might see how the dairy and soya free sausages I’ve found go down. But I’ve got blueberries, bagels and dairy free cream cheese just in case.

sticky toffee date cake

Of course another thing you can do with dates is to make sticky toffee date cake. It is delicious in quite a different, and very much more indulgent, way to the date, apricot, cranberry, and almond and cranberry creations. This is a recipe Boo gave me years ago – I remember she was strangely reluctant to give it to me at the time, but I’m not sure why. I must ask her if she remembers. Probably because she knew I wouldn’t follow it, but it’s a lovely cake. The recipe is in ounces, but as we realised we hadn’t followed the recipe, it probably doesn’t matter. It’s a cake and there are dates in it and a lovely toffee topping

The recipe calls for 2 eggs, 3oz butter, 5oz dark soft brown sugar, 6oz self raising flour, 6oz dates chopped very small and 6fl oz boiling water. Boo’s recipe calls for 2tsp Camp Coffee, but I can’t be doing with that any more. An espresso cup of coffee added to the date cooking water was enough. Rella had the recipe and Flossie, The Beloved and I were in charge of preparation; however, Rella didn’t see the amount of water needed until after the dates were finely chopped, covered in water and brought to a simmer. There was too much water, especially after I added the coffee, but I just cooked it up and kept stirring and mashing it. I think the original recipe had much more evidence of dates, whereas in this one the dates are very soft and mashed. An improvement I’m sure.

So the chopped dates were put in a pan covered with water and the coffee and brought to the boil then simmered and squished until they were really soft. We used a potato masher. We weighed out the butter and put it in a bowl and then weighed out the sugar. Flossie spent sometime squishing the lumps with a fork, before adding it to the bowl and beating butter and sugar together with The Beloved’s help. Eggs were cracked into a jug, whisked and then added to the mixture bit by bit. Then the flour was added bit by bit and the, by now cooled, dates were added a spoonful at a time and folded in. The mixture was poured into a 8″ lined square cake tin and cooked at about 180 degrees for about half an hour until it looked done.

In the meantime, we needed to make the topping which called for 3oz soft brown sugar, 2oz butter, 3tbsp double cream and 3tbsp water. We realised we didn’t have cream so Carlo was dispatched to buy some. The topping takes time. The butter and sugar need to be very slowly melted together and stirred all the time and the water is then added and then the cream. I’m not really sure about this part of the recipe, but I ended up adding more cream and more water too and boiling it up. It was fine. The topping needs to be poured over the cake as soon as it’s done, and then it needs to be left to cool a bit – which is the hardest part.

It’s best served warm with cream or Greek yogurt. It is the kind of cake my mum liked – which is fitting as today is her birthday, (Mauve’s dad’s birthday too). But it’s also Henry’s birthday – he’s 15 today. Happy Birthday Henry!

dates, apricots, cranberries and almonds

Rella is eating a lot of dates because she’s going to have a baby soon and this is what you do – I won’t go into details. She’s getting a little bit tired of trying to eat enough dates each day. She is keen on nakd bars which are about 50% dates on average, but she feels they are a bit pricey. So we aimed to make our own alternative. Flossie helped. We decided we’d aim for 150 grams of fruit and weighed out 70 grams of dates. Rella was alarmed to discover that this was about 7 dates – she was hoping it would be more.

We added 40 grams of dried apricots and it turns out that Flossie really likes dried apricots. Then we added 20 grams of dried-and-sweetened-with-apple-juice cranberries for a bit of sharpness and 20 grams of almonds, which we blanched and skinned, for a protein hit. Flossie enjoyed skinning the almonds and caught most of them. 

The dates needed to be checked in case they had stones in and after checking a few Flossie lost interest because they were too sticky and she went off to see what her dinosaur was doing (being a nuisance it seems). Meanwhile I roughly chopped dates, apricots, cranberries and almonds and put them all in a jug with a splash of water to be ground, squished, mashed and turned into an edible pulp with the Bamix hand mixer. Flossie was up for the grinding for a while, and pressed the button with enthusiasm, but it was quite a challenge and we needed to keep stopping to unclog the blade. Eventually, everything was of a suitable texture.

Rella took over at this point. “You can’t go wrong with those ingredients and they taste really nice, but I can’t believe how difficult that was! ” she said as she rolled the mixture into balls and covered them in ground almonds. 

Rella made eight, very delicious, date, apricot, cranberry and almond bites.  Flossie had been entertained for some of the time and had discovered dried apricots, but there was quite a bit of washing up, and quite a bit of electricity used (though we could possibly have used a pestle and mortar…)

It was a balancing act.  “Actually, all things considered, nakd bars are really good value for money” said Rella.

 

things to do with squash

The Beloved, Carlo and I have had quite a bit of squash recently. Carlo, to be fair, hasn’t eaten much of it, even though I smuggled it into lots of things. He probably suspected, but was too polite to say. Most squash seems to be quite sweet which makes them a good candidate for soup. I’m not so keen on roasted squash in chunks, though there was a green squash with pale yellow flesh that was less sweet than most and we ate this with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses and some feta cheese. It was a good combination.

Squash lasts for ages, so The Beloved says, as long as it’s not cut up. One particularly solid one that The Beloved said was going to last until Spring (not sure what we were going to do with it then) eventually rotted before its time. Faced with such a profligate waste of food, The Beloved decided we should ask Huxhams Cross Farm to give us something else in our veg box. They obliged and we have more green things which are much more preferable.

The last squash was an orange fleshed, green skinned one and it was destined for soup. After my previous soup recipe, Mauve said she was scandalised by the addition of the remains of the coffee in the cafetiere to the the soup as well as other things she felt had no place there. “They obviously don’t play guess the soup ingredients in their house much,” Carlo observed dryly. This time, I’m being less inventive in my choice of ingredients and used onion, celery, squash (which I cut up but didn’t skin and put in the aga for about an hour to cook) and a huge carrot which Flossie washed for me. “My mum says I can’t eat that” said Flossie rather warily of the squash as she scrubbed the carrot.

Once the squash was cooked and cooled, I cut off the skin. It was so easy to do – almost made me want another squash to cook, almost. Flossie put the onion in a pan with a little oil and stirred it well while it cooked until it was translucent. Then we added chopped celery, chopped carrot, the squash, a jug of water, some apple juice and some salt, stirred it all well put the lid on and let it simmer while we blanched half a cup of almonds. Flossie liked doing this and sent almonds all over the place. We added the blanched almonds to the soup and put the lid back on again and searched for other things to add. The herb and spice drawer yielded some ground chilli mixed with fenugreek so a spoonful of that went in and some more water. There was still some parsley in the garden so Flossie picked that and we added it. Flossie wouldn’t taste the soup – must be the squash – but I felt it needed something something sharpish so added a heaped teaspoon of tomato puree. We let it simmer for 15 minutes or so and then it was ready to blend into a smooth soup. It needed a bit more water and a bit more salt and it took time to get the almonds right, but it was good.

“Shall we guess the ingredients of the soup?” I asked at dinner time. “No” said Carlo. “It’s lovely and I don’t want to spoil it.”

another farewell

The Beloved and I went to Bristol for the celebration of Bob’s life yesterday. Bob hadn’t been well enough to attend Grandpa’s celebration, though he would have liked to have done so. He and Grandpa had many things in common – not least an affection for Jan, Grandpa’s niece, and Bob’s partner. There were relatives, friends, laughter, tears, story telling – and, later, food, live Jazz and a free bar. What better way to celebrate a life?

We stayed overnight which was a real treat. This morning, we meandered around the Blaise Castle Estate which is huge and impressive. The Castle is a folly but we didn’t go and see it thinking we would visit the Blaise Castle Museum which is housed in a beautiful, but a little sad looking, 18th century manor house. The signs said it was open, but they’d obviously had a change of heart and the museum was closed. Next time. We then decided to go to Clevedon because it was reasonably close, in the general direction of home and it has a pier.

The pier is a beautiful, wrought iron structure with huge arches. It was opened in 1869 and paddle steamers unloaded passengers from Devon and Wales. The water level varies hugely according to the tides so there were different platforms enabling passengers to disembark no matter what the tide was doing. At some point there were plans to demolish it, but thankfully, a public inquiry and huge public support prevented this from happening. Now the pier is Grade 1 listed and financially viable. The evidence of a huge campaign to get people to support the pier is everywhere you look. Lottery funded projects , knowledgeable volunteers, thousands of brass plaques which line the deck and pier head, a restaurant as well as a cafe and a very good website. We headed for the restaurant, the Glass Box which a volunteer told us was well worth a visit – if only because there is a porthole underneath it through which you can see the underside of the pier.

The menu was not what I expected – much more sophisticated than the usual pier fare, but with a nod to the seaside. There were fish and chips, but also several unusual vegan options including one incorporating a banana flower. We opted for a pea fritter each and shared a bowl of salt and pepper fries. The pea fritter was amazing – fluffy and light around a delicate gathering of a mushy pea puree (but a world away from typical chip shop mushy peas). They were really special. The salt and pepper fries had slivers of well cooked onions and red and yellow peppers running through them. Delicious.

ways with bananas

There were two bananas in the fruit bowl that were really dark and spotty. I already have two such bananas chopped up and frozen waiting to be turned into diary free ice cream, so these new ones needed something else doing with them. Fortunately, Flossie was here. The first things we made were banana pikelets aka pancakes which just involve mashing a banana, adding an egg and enough flour and fine oatmeal to make a dropping consistency. We added some cocoa powder this time and some chia seeds which Rella gave me for added oomph, then fried them in a little olive oil for a few minutes on each side. Banana pancakes always go down well and can be snacked on while you do other things – you can just see some chopped into bite sized pieces on the plate in the first photo.

The second banana was destined for little cakes. Flossie had helped make mince pies the week before, but wasn’t too keen on the mincemeat so wanted to make something better to eat. Little cakes seemed to fit the bill rather than a loaf cake. There were some apricots left over from the Christmas cake making which I thought would go well so I chopped these up and cooked them until they were mashable while Flossie prepared her workspace. She wiped the table with a wet cloth and then dried it – and also extended this cleaning to my glasses. ” You need to see, Nan” she said. Surface prepared, she set about energetically mashing the banana first with a fork and then with a spoon. We added a quarter of a cup of sugar and mixed this in and cracked an egg into the mix and stirred it well. Then a quarter of a cup of rapeseed oil was measured and stirred in and then a quarter of a cup of the mashed apricots which by this time had cooled. Next went in a quarter of a cup of wholemeal self raising flour, half a cup of white self raising flour and half a cup of ground almonds. All was mixed well.

Flossie put paper cases into the cake tins and I spooned the mixture in under her watchful gaze. I was about to take a photo when Flossie told me my hands were sticky and she’d better do it, so she took a photo of the buns before they went into the Aga and another when they came out 25 minutes later looking browned and slightly risen. ” Hot, Nan” Flossie cautioned, so we split a cake open to cool it a bit before she ate it. By the time she’d eaten the first one, they were all cool enough to eat and she generously offered them round. Everyone said they were lovely. “Thank you” said Flossie.

better than the sum of its parts

I like a soup, but I am not one of those people who thinks that the best soup is made from a few ingredients which should be the best ingredients you can get – far from it; I think that a good soup should be made up of whatever is available and that more ingredients just add to the soup’s complexity. This approach means that all kinds of things can be turned into soup – even the most unlovely vegetables and unpromising leftovers can have their place in a soup – and you can use water instead of stock.

The organic veg box we have delivered weekly has recently yielded huge carrots, parsnips, onions and different varieties of squash. It’s difficult to keep up. The beloved likes a roast carrot or parsnip or squash, but Carlo is not a fan of these vegetables if he can identify them individually, but will eat them in a soup – especially if accompanied by French Bread and grated cheese. Soup beckoned.

Into a pan went a glug of rapeseed oil and two finely chopped onions – one red, one brown – which were stirred for a few minutes and then cooked until they were slightly translucent. I put the lid on the pan and removed it from the heat while I washed, peeled and chopped a huge carrot and a large parsnip. I also washed half a cup of red lentils and chopped up two cloves of garlic. I put the pan back on the heat and then added the chopped carrot, parsnip and garlic and stirred it well. The lentils went in next and I stirred them well and put the lid on the pan again. In the fridge was half of the green squash I had roasted the day before so I got that out and added it to the pan and added 1 pint of water, and about half a cup of coffee that was left in the cafetiere for good measure. The soup simmered for 10 minutes or so while I looked for other things to add. I found some stale French bread which I chopped up small. There were some leftover peas and a cooked potato which I chopped up too, and some forgotten celeriac leaves which I chopped very finely and added. Half an apple was just waiting to be chopped and added, as was a past its best satsuma which I juiced and added. I stirred the soup, added another pint of water and tasted the broth. I added 2tsp cumin, 1tsp salt, 1tsp tomato puree, a generous amount of ground black pepper and let the soup simmer for another 10 minutes until the lentils and the carrots were cooked.

When the soup was ready, I pureed it as finely as possible – a soup like this must be pureed and not left with big chinks of vegetables in it. We ate it with French bread and I stirred some left over dairy free yogurt into mine and added more black pepper. It was really nice and so, SO, much more than the sum of its parts.

christmas cake

Have you made a Christmas cake yet? asked Rella just after Halo, Rosie and Sky had left. I hadn’t. If I’d thought about it, we could all have been involved in festive cake making, but they were only here for a flying visit and the girls were too interested in each other – and the three rather wonderful dolls I’d bought from a charity shop.

So when Flossie was here last week, Christmas cake making was on the agenda. I knew there was dairy free butter and sugar, flour and spices, but I wasn’t sure of the dried fruit situation. Flossie and I looked in the pantry for the dried fruit box. A pantry is a wonderful thing and in this house it’s a cool storage room with shelves from the floor to the very high ceiling. It is the home to all kinds of delights which are hidden from view – including the homemade wine, chutney and jam collection, the lentil and bean collection, the chocolate collection and the dried fruit collection. Curating these collections can be a challenge and sometimes these delights don’t get used all that often or are found to have exceeded their sell by dates – which Carlo tells me should be ignored anyway. The dried fruit collection contained a lot of dates (of the fruit variety and also those to be ignored). There were too many dates for my usual cake recipe which was given to be by Mauve years ago – even though I do ring the changes with the dried fruit so it’s always slightly different. It doesn’t usually have dates in it though. Flossie and I weighed the dates. There were 450 grams – quite a lot. I remembered reading Benjamina Ebuechi’s recipe in the Guardian for a Christmas cake which I was sure had dates in, so I hunted it out. The recipe does indeed have dates – 450 grams as luck would have it – but it also has chocolate. The Beloved draws the line at chocolate in a Christmas cake so we gave the chocolate a miss.

As well as 450 grams of dates, the recipe called for 200 grams of raisins – which I didn’t have so I substituted a mixture of prunes and apricots – 150 grams of sultanas, which I also didn’t have so I substituted currants and sour cherries, and 150 grams of dried cranberries – which I did have, but not quite enough so I added the last of the currants.

The dates were chopped into small pieces and put in a bowl with 250ml of boiling water. The recipe said add a teaspoon of bicarb, but also uses plain flour so I figured self-raising flour would negate the need for the bicarb – I usually leave it out anyway as I don’t like the taste of it even though you’re not supposed to be able to taste it. The dates were left to soak while the apricots and prunes were chopped up and added to a large saucepan with the other dried fruit, 150 grams of butter (I used dairy free), 100ml brandy (I had Amaretto) and the juice and rind of a lemon.

We also needed 200 grams of muscovado sugar which was quite lumpy so Flossie did sterling work squashing the lumps with a fork. Into the pan it all went. The cake is basically a boiled fruit cake – I have made one before and it was very lovely, but it’s perhaps not the first recipe you think of as a Christmas cake and it’s not ideal to cook with children. However, having helped with the weighing, chopping and squashing, there was no way that Flossie was going to be prevented from the next stage which was to stir the fruit, sugar and butter mix on the Aga for 10 minutes. “You’ll have to be very careful because the pan will get hot” I said. “I know,” she said as she climbed on to the chair and held the pan by the handle and stirred it all deftly with a very long handled wooden spoon.

After 10 minutes we removed the pan from the heat, stirred in the date mixture and let everything cool while I greased and lined a 23cm deepish cake tin and The Beloved and Flossie weighed out the dry ingredients into a bowl. 200 g of flour – we used half white and half wholemeal self raising – 2tsps ground cinnamon, 2tsp mixed spice, 1tsp mace, 1tsp ground ginger and then 50g ground almonds. (At this point the recipe also said to weigh 2tbsp cocoa and 120g of dark chocolate.) When the fruit mixture was cool enough, Flossie cracked three eggs into the pan and stirred them well and then the flour mixture was added, stirred and smoothed into the prepared cake tin.

Cooking Christmas type cakes in an Aga is a challenge – you need to know your oven’s temperature and use the cold shelf judiciously. The temperature needs to be 140c for two hours 15 minutes which is just possible if, before baking a cake, you cook things on the simmering plate (this cools the oven), have the cold shelf really cold and take it out halfway through and get it cold again (and if the oven gets too hot be prepared to do it again). The cake is done when you can stick a skewer, or a piece of spaghetti, in and it comes out with no bits sticking to it. The cake looked good – a little shiny I thought, but that adds to its charm and, as Carlo said, it will be covered up by the decorations.

bonfire night vodka

Bonfire Night reminds me of Grandpa. He liked a firework and he really liked a bonfire, the bigger the better. Firework displays usually disappointed him because you couldn’t get close enough to the fire, or add your own combustible material because of “health and safety” for which he had an almost complete disregard. He used to encourage my sisters and me when we were kids to bend the wire of sparklers and spin them round to form our own hand-held Catherine Wheels – and he frequently threw fireworks. One year, he fashioned a “firework” out of a tin can. He punched holes in the sides of the can, added some string, put some burning wood from the bonfire in the can and proceeded to swing it around at speed so the the flames left a trail of sparks in the air. It was very impressive and no one was hurt, but The Beloved was quite alarmed. He hadn’t grown up with this kind of reckless abandon around fire.

This year Bonfire Night seems to have taken second place to Halloween which is a shame. We couldn’t find a firework display to go to – well there was one in Plymouth which promised to be really good, but it’s a bit far away and it was raining, so we decided not to go. We didn’t buy any fireworks either and it was too wet for a bonfire here. I’m a bit disappointed. Grandpa would have been very disappointed. But all is not lost and Bonfire Night was celebrated in a different way.

In the kitchen for the last couple of weeks has been a quince. I bought it mainly for its smell which is absolutely gorgeous. It smells a bit like a ripe pear mixed with a really nice apple and with something more exotic mixed in and it perfumes the whole room for ages. Today I decided I should do something with it rather than just smell it. I have made quince cheese before, but it takes ages and you have to stand in front of the stove stirring it until it’s really thick and dark red. Quince jelly is an option, but Liza Beth gave me a jar of her delicious and beautiful quince jelly which I still haven’t finished, and I only have one quince, albeit quite a large one. So I looked through Jane Grigson’s Fruit book. It’s a great book, written in a light conversational style, full of anecdotes, literary gems and recipes for all manner of fruit in alphabetical order. There were several recipes for quince, but quince vodka caught my eye and I knew that there was a bottle of Smirnoff in the pantry which has been there since Christmas. It seemed like a good idea.

First wash your quince and remove any fluff that may be on it, then grate it – skin, core, pips – everything can go in the recipe says. The quince smelled lovely as I grated it, but it goes brown really quickly. I don’t think it impairs the flavour. Put the grated quince in a jar or pot, which has a lid, and which is large enough to hold the quince and 70ml of vodka. Add 2oz/60 grams of caster sugar stir it all together and cover it with vodka. The quince must be submerged. Then seal the pot and leave it in a dark place for 2 months. Taste it and decide whether to continue steeping the quince or not. Apparently it improves with age. Happy Bonfire Night.