Cycling Fuel

Today's recipe is another dessert which I justify the sugar content of by doing over 100km on my bike on a Sunday morning. I really enjoy my cycling and to do it you need a good amount of carbohydrate in reserve so something such as these Butterscotch Squares is just the thing to keep the legs turning (it doesn't travel well though, so I have to load up beforehand).

The recipe is another one of those passed down to me by my mother and, probably, from her mother before that. I may have already mentioned that I come from good baking stock, so there are a number of these recipes that I really associate with my childhood and which are, to me, quintessentially English.

This one refers again to shortcrust pastry, the simplest of pastries and something I have posted on before. Though if you are still too worried/lazy to make it yourself it is available ready-made in most supermarkets. The key to getting a quality product with this recipe is to make sure the egg is well beaten in and to put plenty of holes in the top to stop the air getting trapped inside and lifting the pastry off the filling (something I didn't manage on this occasion as I added the glaze after the holes; schoolboy error). Despite this it is a quick and easy recipe, one to do if the oven is already on for some bread, as I did, and will still taste great even if the pastry is a little crumbly, puffy or soggy. Make sure you grease a square tin well to make it easy to get out afterwards. It is obviously not imperative to use a square tin, though with 'squares' in the name it does ask for it, chuck it into whatever receptacle you have to hand that can withstand 200C and has a similar area.

Till next time: keep up the baking, keep it traditional and try something new (to you).

Simply the best?

You may have noticed that I am steadily catching up with the backlog of recipes I have accumulated over the past few months. This time it is the turn of an idea I had some time ago, but which has taken a while to put into practice (and some experimentation).

I always like to think of new flavours to add to my bread; I often use my simple bread recipe so adding seeds, herbs and other flavourings stops it from becoming dull. The addition of wine to bread is not a new concept, but with my favourite being red wine I wanted to see if I could get that flavour, and colour, into my baking. There are problems with adding wine to bread, the principal one being that high concentrations of alcohol can have an inhibitory effect on the yeast, slowing or even stoping the rising. After a few experiments watering down the wine I realised that this was reducing the flavour and colour too much to be useful, so I came up with another plan.

I reduced an entire bottle of red wine down to about a third of its original volume by heating it slowly on the stove in a large pan. The first time I did this I busied myself elsewhere in the house while it was going on (watched TV), but the second time I had lots of washing up to do so I shared the kitchen with the wine. Bad idea. The fumes coming off the pan got me not-nice-drunk and gave me a nasty little headache into the bargain. I suggest if you try this that you do it in a well ventilated area.

With my super-concentrated and alcohol-free wine I then proceeded to make a loaf of bread that my wife described as, 'possibly the best bread I have ever tasted.' She doesn't shirk telling me when she thinks I have not succeeded in my plans, so this is praise indeed. The taste is reminiscent of both red wine and the flavour of burnt crust, and pervades the entire loaf. I shall definately be making it again, if only because it is a good way to get rid of that bottle that someone bought you, but you haven't had the courage to drink.

As always the recipe is available in an easy to use single page pdf, so give it a go if the idea intrigues you. Even better, try ideas of your own and see what happens.

I made it out of my own head.

Piece of Cake: How to Cheat at Baking

So you've had a few people over for dinner and you haven't made a pudding. It would normally take at least half an hour to make a chocolate sponge, but I have managed to get it down to less than 16mins and make a party piece out of the process.

Some may say that this isn't really baking, to them I say, 'move with the times.' Using a microwave, the main time saving device in this recipe, is no different than using a modern oven would be to traditional bakers of the past.

This recipe incorporates a simple chocolate sauce because one of the disadvantages of this technique is that the cake can be a little dry. The other disadvantage (or you could look at it as an advantage, depending on your point of view) is that it doesn't keep at all and will need to be eaten immediately after 'baking'. Don't worry, get this out at the tea table and there will not be any left for the birds, I assure you.

So if you thought that baking was a long and complicated process try this one, I challenge you to do a sub 16min cake!

Brevity in baking.