In which our hero goes teetotal and sheds some extra cakeage
No, don’t be silly, of course I didn’t go teetotal. It just made for a nice title. You know me better than that.
Firstly, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: me. Let’s be honest, I’ve kind of chubbed. I’ve podged up. Filled out. I’m ‘looking well’ as the ol’ eupemism for ‘shit, you got fat’ goes.
Okay, so I’m not wallowing around in my own flab or anything, but since our fabulous blessing in September last year when I wafted around in a beeyootiful size ten dress for the entire day and felt like a millions dollars:
… I have gained a whopping 9lb. 9lb! That’s, like, a whole baby! I have gained another human being.
Not only is this disgustingly bad news on the health front, it’s pretty dire on the clothes front too. My favourite jeans are snug, and it wasn’t until I went to put on my baggy combats that I discovered they’d inexplicably morphed into very-tight-across-the-bottom combats. Not a good look.
I would like to point out, though, that this is not all my fault. Okay so some of it was the ‘phew, I got into the dress, now I can just let myself go’ post-wedding relief factor, and yes, Christmas didn’t help either. And yes, alright, a bit of it was possibly cakey buns. But most of it has been the dreaded booze.
Hubby and I have slowly been upping the ante until our nightly shared chill-out bottle of wine stealthily morphed into a shared ‘sod it’ second bottle of wine. Add to that an Irish house guest for the last few weeks (you can’t say no to an Irish person – they’re physically incapable of drinking alone), and you’re talking an extra 550 calories a day (per bottle – or 600 if you prefer medium). Seriously.
Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, recently gave us all a good telling off – rightly so in my opinion – and told us we should all be taking responsibility for our own and our families’ health and being better role models for our kids. And he’s right. Letting our kids watch us pour two bottles of wine down our necks is not exactly settling ourselves up for parents of the year (okay, so we tend to drink after they’ve gone to bed, but they’re not stupid – they take the recycling out).
So we gave up. Completely for a couple of days (detox the system, flush the tank, as it were), and then went on to slimline tonic water (thanks to my friend Liz for this tip), occasionally livened with a teeny splash of Bombay Sapphire. My lovely friend Tara also introduced me to the Moscow Mule – a lush mixture of good quality diet Ginger Ale (try Waitrose), vodka and tons of lime. Yummy.
I can’t diet. I really can’t. I love food, love cooking and love eating, and like most foodies, just the thought of dieting brings me out in a cold sweat. Also, don’t you think that the minute you decide to diet you become even more obsessed with food than normal? But I have been sensible, avoiding second helpings and going easy on the cakeage.
Admittedly, my willpower deserted me in spectacular fashion when faced with the chocolate gateaux at the Chocolate Museum Cafe in Cologne:
…but Hubby and I very sensibly shared a slice (a huge moment for me – I never share cake). And the end result? Not only of the lack of wine, but of the nibbles and late night snackage that went with it? I lost 4lb. In a week. That’s erm… well, half a baby.
Smug much?
Rapeseed oil and a lemon and almond cake with lemon drizzle
The fields around this area are, at various times of the year, the most beautiful, glowing yellow with all the oilseed rape. Driving anywhere in the car, it will only be a matter of minutes before someone shouts ‘rape!’ from the back seat (yes, yes, it’s not politically correct, but try explaining being PC to any 15 year old and then you’ll really understand the meaning of a lost cause).
Anyhoo, I’ve been hearing more and more about rapeseed oil. You’ll be impressed here because I’ve actually done my homework. It has:
- the lowest saturated fat content of any oil (6.6g/100g, compared to 14.3g for olive oil and 54.8g for butter)
- very high levels of Essential Fatty Acids (ten times the Omega 3 of olive oil)
- a natural source of vitamin E*.
Then I noticed someone tweeting about substituting rapeseed oil for butter in baking recipes. I contacted her, but she bloody ignored me, so I had to have my own little experiment with a recipe very kindly sent to me last week by Borderfields who, as well as being flippin’ psychic, make cold-pressed rapeseed oil. And wow, it was a great success:
Lemon and Almond Cake
100ml rapeseed oil
225g caster sugar
3 large eggs
1 lemon, zested and juiced
250g self-raising flour
50g ground almonds
1 lemon and about 3 tbsp icing sugar for the drizzle
So first, preheat your oven to 180°C/Gas 4 and dribble a little rapeseed oil into a medium cake tin, rubbing it about with your fingers.
Put the rapeseed oil, sugar, lemon zest (JUST the zest! I got this bit wrong and put the lemon juice in as well, although it didn’t seem to make a difference) and the eggs into a bowl and mix until light and foamy.
Then add the flour, almonds and lemon juice and stir in gently.
Blob the mixture into your oiled cake tin and bake it for about 40 – 50 minutes (check whether it’s done by poking a knife into the centre – it should come out clean).
Leave the cake to cool slightly, then tip into a rack. Squeeze the second lemon and mix the juice with the icing sugar. Drizzle all over the cake.
We served it with big dollops of double cream and it was actually really delicious. As my Mum pointed out, it’s not a really light cake – it’s more like a madeira cake, but it’s moist and the drizzle top is zingy, sweet and crisp, making it yummy served warm as a dessert. Although I can also attest that it keeps quite well and is lovely just cold with a cup of tea. It would also be fabulous topped with a lemony cream cheese icing.
Oh, and I’ve also cooked with the oil quite successfully too – roasties come out well as I think it’s quite pure so it heats to high temperatures quite well, and I’ve used it to fry eggs and drizzle over salmon when grilling too. I think I might actually be a convert.
You can also make it in various different tins – take this, my new favourite – a Nordicware heart bundt tin (reduce cooking time by about ten minutes):
*a big huge thank you to Borderfields Cold-pressed Rapeseed Oil for the health facts, recipe and freebie bottle of oil! Oh and apologies for fiddling with your recipe too.
Grandma Maudie’s Cranberry Teabread
So you know when you have that afternoon lull and you think ‘hmm, what I need is a nice cup of tea and piece of cake?’ Well Hubby had exactly that feeling this afternoon – a sudden, inexplicable craving for Christmas cake. A quick rummage in the cupboards revealed a bit of a motley assortment of half packets of various golden sultanas, raisins and ‘fruit mix’ (arrghhh! Peel!) and it got me reminiscing about when me and the much missed and slightly bonkers Grandma Maudie (you know, the one who used share her evening glass of Baileys with the dog) made an Earl Grey teabread together, back at the original English Towers, my Mum’s lovely pad in leafy ol’ Hertfordshire. We couldn’t find half the stuff we needed, but we ‘made do’ with a right dodgy old selection of pack-ends and bits and bobs – resorting to the cocktail cabinet for a few maraschino cherries too, as I recall. Anyhoo, the end result was fairly pleasant as far as I remember, so I set to work and here’s my approximation, with dried cranberries replacing the cocktail cherries, though!
400g total dried fruit (sultanas/currants/raisins, etc)
50g dried cranberries (or those lovely dried sour cherries would be nice)
200ml hot, strong tea (Earl Grey if you’re posh)
1 tbsp treacle
Juice of ½ lemon
1 egg, beaten
60g golden caster sugar
275g self raising flour
1 tsp mixed spice
So first, measure out 400g of any old dried fruit (don’t listen to those old windbags who guff on about the proportion of raisins to sultanas – they’re all just wrinkly little ugly things, let’s face it (the dried fruit, I mean, not the windbags. Although…). Add in the cranberries, then stir the tbsp of treacle into the hot tea, chuck in the lemon juice and pour it all over the fruit. Leave it, covered, for as long as you can bear (overnight would be brilliant, but at least an hour or two) to really plump up the fruit:
Then when you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 160/gas 3. Generously butter and flour a 2lb loaf tin (yes, even if it’s a non-stick one) and set aside. Beat the egg and stir it into the fruit mixture, then add in the sugar, flour and spice. If you don’t have mixed spice you can just add a pinch each of nutmeg/cinnamon/whatever you do have.
Spoon the mixture into your prepared tin:
… and bake it for about an hour to an hour and a quarter, covered loosely with foil for about the first 40 minutes. When a knife poked into the centre comes out clean, it’s ready.
It won’t keep forever, but it’s rather nice warm spread with a little butter, so you shouldn’t have that problem. Oh and it’s virtually fat free, too. Bit of a bonus, there.
Serve with a nice cup of tea, or, in suitable homage to Grandma Maudie, split a generous glass of Baileys with the dog.
Wedding planning for duffers
So in a couple of short weeks I shall be tripping up the aisle (not literally, fingers crossed) in our pretty little church to renew the vows I made fifteen years ago to love, honour and erm…look after my long-suffering Hubby. We’ve had our ups and downs – neither of us have been angels, but we’ve survived fifteen years without killing each other (it’s been close on occasions), produced two lovely sons and, as the eminently sensible Revd Craig pointed out, that’s got to be worth celebrating.
When he asked me this time last year if I’d consider doing him the honour (‘properly, this time – church… dress… party – the whole nine yards’) who knew that half the fun would be in the planning. I heartily recommend getting married (or remarried or blessed – don’t let the fact that you already have the ring stop you) quite a few years down the line in a relationship. Okay, so the downside is you have to pay for it yourself, and I’ll never make a wedding planner (‘what do you mean the Rally of Ireland is on the same day as the wedding and we can’t use the carpark as it’ll be stuffed full of rally cars?’) but the advantages are enormous. In fact, here are my top ten reasons for planning a wedding once you’re mature enough to make all the decisions:
1 The dress. Every girl knows it’s all about the dress. I had a bit of a false start here, purchasing a sensible, grown up cocktail dress from Monsoon then lying awake at night wishing I’d bought the wedding dress of my dreams. After all, you only get to walk down the aisle once, okay twice. And hey, if I want to do it wearing acres of pink tulle, looking like a cross between Katie Price and the Bride of Frankenstein, then it’s my shout. I don’t, but I reserve the right to.
2 The guest list. Don’t want to invite that maiden aunt with the moustache who frightens the children? Cross her off the list. Let’s face it, by the time you get to your forties (6 months to go before the big 4-0!) you know who your friends are and who they aren’t. We’re delighted that we’ll be spending the day surrounded by the people that we love, and who love us back, and not with the people we felt we had to invite.
3 The service. Now it helps here to have a good relationship with your clergyman. We, happily, are onto a winner. Want a relaxed, child-friendly, happy, intimate service with lots of music and fun? No problem. Craig’s suggestions and ideas have added so much to the ceremony that we just can’t wait. And the locals secretly can’t wait to get a shufty inside the C of I church either.
4 The details. ‘I want the church full of flowers!’, I said to the florist, presenting her with my lovingly-made collage cut from several hundred wedding magazines. ‘I’d love the scent of beautiful lilies, freesias and roses to hit the congregation as they walk in… and I want my bouquet to be huuuuge and smell gorgeous and be full of bright colours: pink and orange and lime green…’ [cue sound of needle screeching across record.] Okay, so my original remit for the florist might have been a little extravagant. Flowers are slightly expensive and the sound of Hubby’s sharp intake of breath when presented with the quotation was enough to send me scuttling back with a slightly amended version of my original flamboyant request. These things cost money, y’know. The advantage is that you know exactly what you want. Even if you can’t actually afford it.
5 The cake. Don’t like fruit cake? Bit of a fan of Ace of Cakes? Happen to have an incredibly talented friend who just happens to make the most fantastic cakes in the world? You’re onto a winner. Jen and I have spent many a happy hour discussing the merits of white chocolate sponge with raspberry filling versus dark chocolate sponge with a lime-scented ganache. In the end we decided we’d have a layer of each one we liked. See, when you’re grown up you can make those kind of decisions.
6 The music. The fantastic night we spent at JD’s wedding convinced us that their band was the only one we wanted. It didn’t matter that they’re based in Waterford, and that there’s six of them plus a ton of equipment to find room for. We had to have them, so we took budget money away from other stuff and juggled the sums until we could afford them. You can do that when it’s your money.
7 The poncy bits. Don’t want buttonholes (‘why would I want a flower on my suit?’)? Don’t have ‘em. Ditto all the awkward, expensive and largely pointless bits that nobody cares about like favours. I mean, who actually eats those sugared almonds in a bit of netting tied with ribbon anyway? Cross ‘em off. Equally, if you want every car to be decorated with bright pink ribbon, for example, or have a friend mental enough to agree to sit with you and tie 85 bows of ribbon around 85 order of service scrolls then go for it. The poncy bits are all yours.
8 The grub. You get to pick the food you like. We’re lucky because the chef at the hotel didn’t run away screaming when he saw me enter our meeting with a clipboard and a list of requirements twenty feet long. Even better, he suggested fantastic local produce that we could incorporate into our wedding feast: beautiful fresh crab from Annagassan on the coast of County Louth… fresh local wild salmon and sides of beef sourced locally from the wonderful beef farmers of County Cavan (a couple of whom will be there with their families, which reminds me of my favourite conversation so far: ‘thanks for the invitation…you do know that I have five kids don’t you?’ Me: ‘Yup and we want you to bring them all along – don’t worry, we’ll reserve you a pew!’).
9 The chiselers. You get to enjoy it all with your kids. The boys’ friends will all be there and they’ve had enormous fun planning the day with us. They’ve picked out their suits and selected a couple of lucky local girls to share their ‘first dance’ with. The lovely Revd Craig suggested including them in the actual blessing ceremony and they’re breathless with excitement. What better way to teach them about the importance of family than to get them involved?
10 The fun. Oh we have some tremendous fun stuff planned. Some really bonkers off-the-wall stuff that will have our guests astounded and amused. Again, a flexible, forward-thinking vicar is de rigeur in this situation. But, I mean, blimey, it IS supposed to be fun, isn’t it?
Oh, but it’s not all romance and roses. We’ve had our fair share of doubts too. Are we mental? Does anyone really give a shit if the crab’s local? Is it wise that 35 of our 85 guests are children? Why have we spent all this money when we could have had two weeks on a tropical beach and renewed our vows barefoot on the sand with the boys in hawaiian shirts?
I collar the Hubby while he’s watching the grand prix. ‘Are we mad?’, I ask him. ’Would you have preferred the beach?’.
‘I don’t know’, he says, ‘I’ll tell you the day after the blessing’.
Oh.
Rhubarb crumble traybake cake thing (that’s extra yum with syrup instead)
So a friend of mine mentioned that she’s rather fond of rhubarb crumble traybake, but that she’s been unable to find a recipe. Being a stick-my-nose-in sort of a person, I decided I’d have a fiddle around and see if I could make her a good approximation of her bakey cakey thing. And here’s what I came up with:
First you need some lovely young rhubarb. Mine’s not quite ready in the garden so I had to make do with some from Tesco, which was well past its pension-pulling age, I can tell you. Anyhoo, here’s what you need:
115g butter
115g sugar
2 eggs
A teeny grating of fresh ginger/orange zest/tsp vanilla extract/cinnamon/whatever
115g self raising flour
400g sliced rhubarb
Beat the butter and sugar together until it’s really light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. To flavour your sponge, you can either go with the usual teaspoon of vanilla extract, or I found that some grated fresh ginger added a nice zing (I keep it in the freezer and grate it straight from frozen). I was discussing my ressup with Madame Belly Rumbles and she then pointed out that a little chopped preserved ginger would be lovely here too – along with a dash or two of the syrup. Or some orange zest maybe. Anyhoo, then gently stir in the flour. If the mixture is a bit stiff you can add a splash of milk.
So spoon this batter over your sliced rhubarb, which you’ve arranged in the bottom of something akin to a small baking tin or lasagne dish or whatever (if you haven’t yet discovered the bestest non-stickiest tray ever that was dirt cheap in Tesco, then I suggest you butter your tin first too). I used 200g rhubarb, but honestly, it was a bit of a case of ‘spot the rhubarb’ – you really need at least double that I think as it practically disappeared.
For the crumble:
115g plain flour
60g butter
60g demerara sugar
So after you’ve blobbed the cake mix haphazardly over the rhubarb, make the crumble by gently rubbing the butter into the flour, then stirring the sugar in. Give it a bit of a squeeze with your fingertips so it clumps together, then crumble it over the cake mix.
Bake at 180 degrees /gas 4 for 30 mins and serve with cream or custard or vanilla ice cream (not the one made out of rehydrated skimmed somethinorother, the one made with eggs and milk and cream, thankyouverymuchly).
This is one of those ‘use anything’ kind of recipes – it would be just as nice over a layering of apples with some grated lemon zest, or some lovely fresh peaches and a touch of honey… Oh, and then on the Sunday when me Ma was here, I did the same recipe, but instead of the rhubarb, I dolloped about a ton of golden syrup in the bottom of the tin, covered it in the cake mix and then added the crumble. Naughty, but ohhhhh so nice:
Mr Lovely’s 100 cupcake birthday
So this week, Mr Lovely (D next door’s brother in law – it’s all so incestuous round these parts) turned 40. Mrs L has been, somewhat reluctantly it has to be said, planning a big party and we had a little brainstorming evening to sort out the finer details. Seeing as Mr L is a fireman, it made sense for someone to bake a fire engine cake. Mrs Lovely didn’t volunteer. Neither did I. It turned into a bit of a staring contest and then we decided that we’d pursue other avenues – both of us being severely cack-handed in the cake decorating department. We were chatting about cupcake towers and the like and looking on the internerd when it dawned: cupcakes…loads and loads of little cupcakes each decorated with a teeny fire engine. Mrs Lovely vowed to have a crack at a fire engine cake too. The nutter.
Saturday morning dawned, then, and I started on the cupcakes. While I baked batches of 24, passing children were enlisted to help melt chocolate and whisk ganache and stick on the little rice paper/icing cake-toppers that Mrs L ordered and had delivered to her sister in the UK, along with a big list of other baking stuff that’s hard to find here (she got stopped coming through customs with a big block of royal icing – ‘no officer, it’s not semtex – honest’). We decided to stick to vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate ganache, and chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate. But honestly, after a while, it all kind of got a bit confused and anyone that happened to have made a bowl of ganache dolloped it on the nearest available cakes.
So for the vanilla cupcakes, then, you need
125g butter
125g caster sugar (vanilla sugar if you have it)
1 tsp vanilla extract (leave out for the chocolate ones)
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour (replace a heaped tbsp with cocoa for chocolate ones)
Couple of tbsp milk
Firstly, try to make sure everything is at room temperature. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add the vanilla extract and then the eggs, beating well after each addition. Don’t worry if it curdles – that’s such an old wives tale – just add some of the flour and carry on. Then gently fold in the flour (if you beat the hell out of it you won’t get a lovely light sponge) and lastly the milk – just enough to make the batter plop softly off a tablespoon into the cupcake paper. Bake at 180/gas 4 for about 18 minutes until golden – they should spring back when lightly pressed. Cool on a wire rack. This amount will make about 12 cupcakes. Remember you don’t want them too high, or the ganache won’t completely cover them.
For the ganache:
200g bar white chocolate
2 tbsp icing sugar
About 100ml double cream
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water (don’t let it spit everywhere as you risk getting water in the chocolate, in fact, once it’s boiled just turn it off – the chocolate will still melt). When just melted, take it off the heat and sieve in the icing sugar. Gently start to whisk that in, then while you’re whisking, pour in the cream until you have a thick, glossy bowlful – about the same consistency as melted chocolate. Pour a generous tablespoon of it over each cupcake – ideally so that it just about reaches the top of the paper case. Then just leave them naked or decorate with whatever you like: mad, printed cake toppers…grated chocolate… a big swirl of whipped cream… jelly beans… whatever.
Multiply that recipe by about 8, blow up your food mixer, scoff any disasters, make a few more and there you have it. A 100 cupcake birthday extravaganza. Happy birthday, Mr Lovely! Oh, and she never did make that fire engine cake, y’know. Great party though.
English Mum’s ‘Don’t Eat Six Gingercakes’ Diet
So Hubby and D-next-door play 6-a-side soccer on a Thursday (well, sometimes it’s 5-a-side, or 7, depending on who can be arsed). They come home absolutely shattered, pouring with sweat, have a quick shower and bugger off to the pub where they consume large amounts of beer. I can’t help myself; I have to question how healthy this pastime actually is. I, on the other hand, don’t bother with the exercise or the working up of a sweat – I just go straight into the vino. We have a chat and decide that we’re probably not the healthiest of families.
The thing is, though, dear reader, I generally don’t think we do too badly. We have good, freshly prepared food, eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, we exercise… Well, I walk the dog every day and Hubby has a gym in the garage (I don’t go in since my run-in (hah) with the evil running machine that glares at me when I go to put stuff in the tumble dryer. It made me dry-heave after ten minutes then spat me onto the floor). But yes, I do have a serious baking addiction and a fondness for a glass of wine or seven. Where do you draw the line? I think I’m quite healthy – I’m a size 12, which is probably about right for my 5’7″ frame. I have been this size for my whole adult life. Yes, I have ‘tits and ass’ (sorry mother), but I like them, I’m fond of them and I don’t want them to disappear.
But (or should that be butt), equally, I’ve noticed the curve of my tummy being rather more pronounced recently, and as much as I love curves, I wouldn’t want them to be lost under rolls of flab either. I want to continue to be healthy, but to curb some of my more extreme habits (the baking of 6 ginger cakes in one day because I couldn’t quite get it sticky enough being one of them).
I absolutely and utterly will not do diets. I won’t have the D word even mentioned in my house. I think denial equals disaster. Healthy eating is one thing, but denying yourself fruit on the Atkins diet because it contains hidden sugar is just plain mental and unhealthy and I won’t countenance it. We have a long chat, and decide on the following rules for English Towers:
- We will try to have a healthy breakfast (damn, there goes the enormous slice of leftover ginger cake and the big fat hot chocolate, then)
- We will cut down on the amount of refined food and junk that we eat. Damn you, Ronald McDonald.
- We will try to avoid eating big stodgy meals after 6pm (scientific studies – not that pillock Atkins – have proven that you don’t need huge amounts of carbs at night when you’re going to just sit around and not burn them off).
- We will (double gulp) cut down on our alcohol intake. Initially we’ll try to just drink alcohol at weekends.
- We will do all this without making a big fuss and involving our children in ‘ooh, I can’t possibly eat that’ type conversations.
There. I’ve said it. And now I’ve told you all it will have to become law or I’ll look really stupid. And I’ve just bought 24 bottles of Jacob’s Creek up at Tesco’s in Enniskillen too. Damn.
Chocolate and Banana Loaf
Chocolate and Banana Loaf
#1 was off to a choir competition yesterday evening (they came 4th – not bad for their first competition), so I thought I’d make something yummy for them to come home to. I had a couple of leftover bananas that were a bit past their best, so I shoved them into the usual 4/4/4/2 cake mix and I have to say it worked quite well. Here we go then:
4oz butter
4oz caster sugar
4 oz self-raising flour
1 tablespoon cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2 mashed bananas
Bar of Green and Black’s dark chocolate
Cream the butter and the sugar until pale, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Fold in the flour and the cocoa (sieved). I added a teaspoon of baking powder to compensate for the heaviness of the bananas, but not sure what it would be like without it (it was quite dense and moist). Fold in your mashed bananas and your smashed up chocolate and pour into a lined loaf tin (I turn the loaf tin over and cut two strips, one the same width as the bottom, one the same length, then cross them into the bottom of the tin) and bake. It needs about an hour at 180 degrees, gas mark 4, but stick a knife in a bit before and see if it comes out clean.
I proudly presented a slice to #2 when he came home from school and his response was suspicious: ‘hmm, what’s in this?’ Seeing as he’d actually got the first mouthful in, I took a gamble and told him it was banana. ‘Yuck’, came the reply as he pushed it away, ‘gross’. I despair.
