Get shorty

Last week, I couldn’t stop thinking about strawberry shortcakes. Despite never actually having eaten one, the perfect summer weather had me craving something decadent and scone-y, with equal greedy measures of jam, cream and strawberries. So I decided to treat the girls at our weekly knitting club to some shortcake goodness. After a brief bit of internet hunting, I found Nigella Lawson’s version. Needless to say, they were delicious. I made them the day before we planned to eat them and they were easily refreshed by warming them up in a pre-heated oven for 5-10 minutes.

These shortcakes are definitely best served warm, with lashings of whipped cream and strawberries. And probably a spoon, too. Because, let’s face it, the best puddings are the messy ones! Let’s go summer, we’ve got the food nailed.

Strawberry shortcakes
by Nigella Lawson

Ingredients:

For the shortcakes:
325g (11oz) plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
5 tablespoons caster sugar
125g (4oz) unsalted butter, frozen
1 large egg, beaten
125 ml single cream

For the filling:
approx. 300g (10oz) strawberries
1 tablespoon caster sugar
3 drops balsamic vinegar (optional)
250ml double cream or crème fraîche

- Preheat the oven to 220°C/gas mark 7. Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and 3 tablespoons of the sugar in a large bowl. Grate the butter into these dry ingredients and use your fingertips to finish crumbling the butter into the flour. Whisk the egg into the cream, and pour into the flour mixture a little at a time, using a fork to mix. You will probably not need all of the eggy cream to make the dough come together, so go cautiously.

- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and roll gently to a thickness of about 2cm / ¾ inch. Dip a 6½ cm / 2½ inch round cutter in flour and cut out as many rounds as you can. Work the scraps back into a dough, re-roll and finish cutting out. You should get 8 in all. Place the shortcakes about 2½ cm / 1 inch apart on a greased or lined baking sheet, brush the tops with the remaining egg/cream mixture, and sprinkle them with the remaining 2 tablespoons of caster sugar. If it helps with the rest of your cooking, or life in general, you can cover and refrigerate them now for up to 2 hours.

- Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden-brown, and let them cool for a short while on a wire rack. Meanwhile, crush half the strawberries with the spoonful of sugar and the few drops of balsamic vinegar if using, and halve or quarter the remaining strawberries, depending on their size. Whip the double cream, if you’re using.

- The shortcakes should be eaten while still warm, so split each one across the middle and cover with a spoonful of the crushed strawberry mixture, a few halved or quartered strawberries, then dollop some whipped cream or crème fraîche on top, and set the top back on.

Two years on

Following my post almost a year ago, in which I reflected on our one year chicken-keeping anniversary, I thought I’d write a bit about what’s been happening since. Basically, not much. All is cool. In fact, we’re pretty obsessed with chickens now.

It surprised me how easily the chickens fitted into our lives. In fact, a couple of months ago we decided to get three more, and went back to the lovely Home Farm in Overton to pick out Sybil, Hatty and Ghosty/Navin/Pig Eye Jackson (don’t ask). They have settled in well, and despite regular squabbles over food and territory, are all laying eggs regularly. We’re eating a lot of omelettes and pavlova at the moment…

We’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden lately, tidying, weeding and preparing for a new shed. Being around the chickens every day, even if it’s just ten minutes, has meant that they are as used to us now as we are to them. They are excellent at “helping” in the garden. They follow us round, getting in the way. They are nosey, and peck at anything they deem to be food (wellies, fingers, lips!).

We’re very fortunate to have lovely friends to act as chicken-sitters when we go away, for which I am very grateful. There are always things going on with the chickens – Hatty has a habit of scaling a four foot fence, and Queenie currently has a cold – but I wouldn’t change them for anything. It dawned on us recently that we’re probably always going to keep chickens. And that’s totally fine with me. Turns out we’re just chicken people.

Birthday caking

My friend Erica has a bit of a thing for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not a sexy thing, more like…HE’S AWESOME. It was Erica’s birthday last month, and a big one at that, so I thought it was about time I tackled a cake fit for a colourful, inspiring and fun-loving girl.

The starting point came when I saw this post on baking a polka dot cake, and it pretty much blew my mind. I mean, how amazing! I bought a cake pop mould and set to work, colouring small amounts of a basic vanilla sponge mix.

The cake pop colours didn’t come out as vivid as I would have liked, but I just delighted I was able to get them out of the mould in one piece…

Next step: I blobbed some cake mix in the bottom of three 20cm round cake tins, arranged six cake pops evenly per tin and covered them with more cake mix.

This stage looked a little, err, blobby, but hey! They turned out ok!

Next I sandwiched the cooled layers together with buttercream icing (recipe here, minus the cocoa powder).

Then, I did something I’d never tried before: I crumb-coated the cake. This is a very thin layer of icing, which is spread all over the cake to “glue” any crumbs down and ensure that the top layer of icing is super smooth and clean, without any crumbs poking their stupid heads through your work of art. In the past I’d always skipped this step, as it is quite time-consuming, but I knew I wanted this cake to be GREAT, and I wasn’t about to let any pesky crumbs interfere with my icing. It was also weirdly therapeutic and gave me time to mull over how I was going to decorate the cake.

I let the cake sit for the rest of the afternoon, to let the crumb coating do its thing. Then I set to work with the final layer of icing, which I’d decided was going to be OMBRÉ. Oh yes. First, though, I had to address the main man: Arnie. With help from the ever-patient Jim, I printed and cut out a picture of Arnie as the Terminator, then laid this across the cake. I then dusted the cut out areas with edible silver glitter…

And glittery Arnie was complete!

For the sides, I separated a large batch of buttercream icing into three bowls, and used food gel to colour each one from pale lilac to darker purple. I set to work applying the icing in stripes down the cake, with leftover white icing for the top stripe. This may sound tricky, but a small butter spreader dipped in warm water worked wonders for blending the colours together.

Finally the Arnie cake was ready for its birthday debut…and it went down well. The polka dots even worked! Even better, there was enough cake for all of Erica’s party guests. Way to go, Arnie cake! You made a special lady very happy.

Lately

Spending: a sunny morning at our first car boot sale of the year

Hanging: out in the garden with our small, feathered friends

Celebrating: May birthdays with treasure hunts, parties and of course, cake

Delighting: in signs of Spring after a very long winter

Whiling: away many an evening with the usual crafting and baking

An Estonian love affair

Last month, we spent a week in Tallinn, Estonia. We like to visit unusual, off-the-beaten-track sort of places, and Tallinn certainly didn’t disappoint. When we arrived we had just missed the latest big snowfall, so it was very cold, with the ground white and icy, but the sky was blue and clear – perfect weather for exploring. Tallinn is a small but beautiful city, a true mix of ancient town walls and modern shops. We stayed just at the edge of the Old Town, the perfect spot for exploring local wool shops, vintage stores and cafés, and as well as good access to museums and flea markets further out of town.

Before holidays, we like to do plenty of research. This usually involves scouring the internet for local flea markets, festivals and recommendations of good places to eat/drink/party. While researching Tallinn, we stumbled across a wonderful resource called Like a Local. Currently covering almost thirty cities across Europe, the Like a Local guide includes only recommendations from locals. In the words of the guide’s creators, it is “about finding those cool and hidden spots that locals like to hang out and missing the tourist traps. All our content is created by selected locals who’ve lived in their city for years and really know what they’re talking about.”

Brilliant! We thought. And it really was – especially since the guide has a mobile app, which requires no internet connectivity when you’re out and about. This was especially helpful in Tallinn, where many restaurants and bars which were lovely inside didn’t look exactly, erm, welcoming from the outside. If you are holidaying in Europe anytime soon I would heartily recommend checking out the Like a Local website and app. This guide truly helped us out every day of our holiday, and thanks to it, we ate, drank and shopped in some great, and extremely varied, places.

Ok, I think I’ve gushed enough about the guide, haven’t I? (Seriously though, check it out. It’s great.) Our week away really was magical, with highlights including exploring the many woolly-goods shops in the Old Town; catching local buses and trams to trapped-in-time flea markets; the snowy wonderland of Kadriorg Palace; getting engaged; taking a day tour of the stunning Lahemaa National Park; visiting the brilliant Puppet and Seaplane Harbour Museums; and of course, eating some of the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted. Giant pancakes anyone? Oh, did I mention we got engaged!? More about that below…for now, though, here are some photos:

So…the engagement! In the middle of our third day in Tallinn, in a tiny, cosy little café called Chocolaterie Pierre, Jim proposed. I was taken completely by surprise, especially as I had no idea when he would have been to get a ring. Turns out he had been fibbing about where he was going and sneaking off ring shopping with his friend Stan. Crafty! Of course I said yes, and for the rest of the holiday we were in a delirious happy bubble, so much so that I didn’t really fancy coming home…but I knew the reactions from our family and friends would be wonderful, and they were. We are getting married in May 2014 in the Welsh countryside, and I am so excited!

So Tallinn will always hold a special place for us, not just for obvious reasons, but because it is a beautiful place. A sparkly ring always helps to make a holiday, but when the city itself is a true gem, well, you can’t really go wrong.

You can see the rest of our holiday snaps over on flickr.

A chocolate fix

Wowee, I have been neglecting this space of late. Turns out it’s extremely easy to let new goals slip: namely, writing a blog post at least once a week. Well, everything goes out of the window when exciting things happen. Since my last post, we spent a wonderful week in Tallinn, Estonia, which I could go on and on about because it was just so lovely. But let’s leave that for my next post. Today, I would like to share a little chocolate fix with you in the form of one of the easiest and surprisingly simple recipes for a pudding I’ve ever come across.

So let’s turn to one of the most accomplished of our time: Nigel Slater (you may remember I raved about his warming ginger cake a while ago). This is a great recipe to make if you feel like spoiling a loved one, or indeed, yourself. It makes beautiful, rich chocolate puddings, which are just perfect eaten straight from the oven, with double cream. They are equally delicious the next day, when they have solidified a bit, and become more cakey. Nigel’s recipe uses chocolate hazelnut spread to add a nutty depth, but I’m not a huge fan so instead replaced the spread with a shot of Irish cream liquer. Oh my, it was heavenly. Whichever way you lean, treat someone special to this recipe. Pretty much guaranteed brownie points.

The recipe suggests using four ramekin dishes, but I baked my puddings in very well buttered muffin moulds, and they came out fine. The trick is to gently prise them out while the puddings are still slightly warm, or they will stick. Also: this quantity made ten muffin-sized puddings! So prepare to share (or be extremely greedy).

Hot chocolate puddings
from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries

200g (7oz) dark, fine quality chocolate
100g (3½oz) caster sugar
3 eggs
60g (2oz) butter
2 lightly heaped tablespoons chocolate hazelnut spread or
one shot of Irish cream liquer

- Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/Gas mark 6. Lightly butter four small ramekins, oven-proof cups, or a muffin tray.

- Break the chocolate into rough pieces and put it in a bowl suspended over a pan of gently simmering water. Let it melt without stirring, occasionally poking any unmelted chocolate down into the liquid chocolate.

- Put the sugar into a food mixer, separate the eggs and add the yolks to the sugar. Beat until thick and creamy. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until airy and almost stiff.

- Stir the butter into the chocolate and leave to melt, then gently stir in the chocolate spread/liquer. Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg and sugar, then carefully fold in the beaten egg whites with a metal spoon. Take care not to overmix. Just firmly, calmly mix the egg white into the chocolate, making certain there are no floating drifts of egg white.

- Scoop into the buttered dishes/muffin tray and bake for twelve to fifteen minutes, until risen. The tops should be cracked and the centres still slightly wobbly. Should you open one too early, it can go back in the oven without coming to as much harm as you might think.

Snow adventures

We recently had a LOT of snow around these parts, which, like many of our friends, we took as the perfect opportunity to go frolicking. Erddig House is a National Trust property in Wrexham, which features an 18th Century country house and a beautiful 485-hectare country park. We are lucky enough to live within walking distance of the park, and have enjoyed many picnics, walks and frisbee games in the summer sunshine. It’s a lovely place, popular with dog-walkers and families alike, and is a wonderful pocket of greenery right near the town centre.

So when the snow came, we decided to spend an afternoon in Erddig, wandering through snowdrifts and taking photographs. Although the snow caused a lot of disruption in the town, it also transformed our surroundings into a Winter wonderland. Erddig was especially enchanting, and I was awestruck by the beauty we encountered on our walk. Snow may be annoying, but it has the power to make everything silent, calm, and utterly stunning. Here are some photos from our afternoon out – and you can find the whole set over on Flickr.