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March 31, 2008
By Request: Irish Tea Brack
Since I first wrote about the McDonnell's Good Food Cookbooks I have had several emails asking for recipes that people remember from their childhood or enjoyed years ago but have since lost. The latest request, from Renee who wants to make the cake for a family occasion, is for the Tea Brack recipe from the first cookbook. This is one of our family favourites, a much used recipe, but - as I well remember from frustrated occasions searching for it - annoyingly filed under the name Irish Tea Brack in the Irish Tea Time Favourites chapter, just across the page from Gingerbread.
It is a very simple cake to make. Just soak your fruit the night before you want to bake it - you could always replace some of the tea with whiskey for added interest - and it multiplies up very well. I well remember soaking vast bowls of dried fruit to make four or six loaves at a time as it keeps very well in the old biscuit tin that was always filled with some kind of fruitcake for the after school cup of tea. It is particularly good, cut into thin slices and spread with lots of salty butter. Back in the days when I didn't like fruitcake, I did love this and Boiled Fruit Cake from the same book as the liquid used in both recipes ensured that the dried fruit was properly re-hydrated, the slices crammed full of plump and luscious sultanas, raisins and currants, with maybe the occasional cherry thrown in for good measure.
Along with substituting butter for the marg used in the original recipe, I will give both the imperial and metric measurements as they appear in the cookbook. I haven't cooked this in a fan oven so would be interested to know what kind of temperature/cooking times other people use.
Irish Tea Brack
Strong black tea - 12 tablespoons/180ml
Mixed dried fruit - 1lb/450g
Brown sugar - 6oz/175g
Egg - 1, lightly beaten
Butter - 1oz/25g, melted
Plain flour - 10oz/275g
Bread soda - ½ level teaspoon
Mix the black tea, dried fruit and brown sugar in a large bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave to soak overnight.
The next day, preheat the oven to 350˚F/180˚C. Butter and line a 2lb/800g loaf tin.
Stir the egg and melted butter into the soaked fruit mixture. Sieve the plain flour and bread soda together and fold in to the rest of the ingredients. Scrape the cake mixture into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 90 minutes.
Cool in tin for 10 minutes before turning out. Cool on a wire rack.
Makes 1 loaf.
Posted by Caroline at 12:22 PM | Comments (6)
March 26, 2008
Dublin food and wine events
In the "I wish I was still living in Dublin" category, check out the forthcoming evening of Italian food, wine and song organised by Greatfood.ie and the Italian School of Cooking for this Saturday night (29 March). Tickets for that are on sale at Greatfood2buy.com. Independent wine blog Sour Grapes - well worth taking a look at for some decent wine reviews - is organising a wine tasting event at Fallon & Byrne for 15 April. Sign up at Sour Grapes here.
Posted by Caroline at 7:06 AM | Comments (3)
March 24, 2008
More Easter chocolate
Not having a TV, I've only just heard about Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory, a Channel 4 series about chocolate entrepreneur Willie Harcourt-Cooze and his dreams of growing, importing and manufacturing high-end chocolate products in England. Although there's no video online, there is a selection of photos from each of the four episodes of the show, the last part of which was shown last night, alongside some of Willie's recipes - I particularly like the Black Beans one. And make sure you don't miss the feature on chocolate ad blasts from the past, including the caramel bunny, the Man from Milk Tray and - of course - "Ambassador! You are spoiling us".
Posted by Caroline at 4:42 PM | Comments (4)
March 23, 2008
Chocolate for Easter
I think my mother has one of her legendary Pavlovas already in the works for the aftermath of the Easter family lunch but, if you're not going to be as lucky, these Chocolate Hazelnut Mini-Puds, adapted from a Nigella recipe, are well worth trying.
This mixture makes eight - serving our family of seven, with one left over to fight for - but it's a very easy thing to halve the recipe if you are serving less people. You do not want to over cook these mini-puddings so the easiest way to make them is to melt the butter and dark chocolate just before lunch, leave to cool then combine with the rest of the pre-weighed ingredients as everyone relaxes after the lamb (it's Easter - it has to be lamb!), sticking it into the oven while the table is cleared and the obligatory pot of post-lunch tea is made. And please do serve with the recommended jug of pouring cream - the combination of cold cream, gooey chocolate interior, crunchy hazelnuts (and, in the spirit of keeping this simple, I don't worry about peeling them) and crusty sponge is truly worth enjoying in concentrated silence.
Chocolate Hazelnut Mini-Puds
Butter - 250g
Dark chocolate (stick with minimum 60% cocoa solids) - 250g
Eggs - 4
Muscovado sugar - 300g
Plain flour - 6 tablespoons
Hazelnuts - 200g, roasted and roughly chopped
Preheat the oven to 200˚C, putting a baking sheet inside it as you do. Butter eight 150ml ramekins.
Melt the butter and dark chocolate in a bowl suspended over a saucepan of simmering water. Leave to cool.
Mix the eggs, sugar and flour in a second bowl with a hand whisk, then beat in the cooled chocolate mixture. Add the roasted, chopped hazelnuts. Divide the batter between the buttered ramekins and bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. The tops of the mini-puds should be solid and cracked but the middle will still be nicely soft and sticky.
Sit each ramekin on a saucer, with a teaspoon on the side. Serve with a jug of very cold pouring cream so that each person can break open their mini-pud with the spoon and pour the cold cream into the hot, molten, chocolaty depths.
Serves 8.
Posted by Caroline at 10:46 AM | Comments (2)
March 19, 2008
A few days in London...
...in which Bibliocook pays a quick visit in the rain to Blackheath Farmers' Market, picking up a log of goat's cheese on the way, has dinner in a rather nice private room at The Punter in Cambridge, eats breakfast in Baker and Spice (while admiring the enormous rectangles of butter and jars of jam for sharing in the middle of the communal table, wondering idly how long it takes before the display is irretrievably destroyed) dashes into The Hummingbird Bakery to take a peep at their cupcakes, walks all the way from Richmond train station to Skye Gyngell's tea house at Petersham Nurseries only to discover - oh tragedy - that it is shut on Mondays, cooks dinner (a gnocchi dish, with Gubbeen cheese and chorizo imported by Caroline, very much adapted from an idea in this month's delicious.) for the London-based Brother and his partner, pays homage - once again - at Books for Cooks and catches up with a former Ballymaloe classmate over dark Americanos, Mushrooms and Goat's Cheese on Brioche and a Chocolate Loaf Cake at the Grocer on Elgin. Phew!
Posted by Caroline at 8:06 AM | Comments (5)
March 12, 2008
Days of kale and wonder
Spring may not be properly sprung, judging by this week's storms, but there's still a lightness in the air, a brightness in the mornings and evenings which translates itself onto the dinner table. Not being entirely well organised gardeners, it took us a while to figure out which of the selection of plants still standing (or half battered down) in the garden is kale - the other that we still have growing is purple sprouting broccoli or PSB, although not yet P or S, although we still have our fingers crossed. We're growing a variety called Ragged Jack, with large frilly leaves, and I had only ever encountered curly kale before this so initially refused to believe that it was edible. After confirming that it is indeed edible - more than that, it's actually delicious, with tender and juicy leaves - we have been eating it with abandon.
During the dog days of winter, it made frequent appearances as a last minute addition to stews and soups - that was if someone felt like braving the nasty weather and Very Dark Garden outside. Happily, the Husband's head torch (normally used for camping) proved very useful in a winter countryside setting. Washed, de-stemmed and shredded, it just takes a few minutes to cook in a pan of bubbling winter-time food, softening into a delicious bright greenness in minutes. But there's more to kale than using it just as a last-minute addition other meals. Here's a recipe for those times when you feel like you need a spring tonic - just kale, garlic, chilli, olive oil and lemon juice. After a plateful of this, perhaps on a slice of your own homemade bread rubbed with more garlic and drizzled with some of the olive oil you used to cook the kale, you'll feel ready to face whatever the weather may throw at you.
Kale with Garlic, Chilli and Lemon
For each person
Kale - a couple of handfuls
Olive oil
Garlic - 1 clove, peeled and sliced
Red chilli - ½, deseeded and sliced finely
Freshly ground black pepper, sea salt
Lemon - ½
To serve:
Sourdough bread - 1 long slice
Garlic, olive oil
Wash the kale thoroughly. Remove the stem with a sharp knife, roll up the leaves and cut into shreds about 1cm thick. Start toasting the bread. Heat a glug of olive oil in a frying pan, add the garlic, cook over a medium heat until just golden then add the chilli and shredded kale. Season and stir well. Clamp a lid or plate on top of the pan and allow the kale to cook in its own steam for a couple of minutes. Squeeze some lemon juice to taste then serve on a warm plate, piled on top of the hot toast, rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil.
Posted by Caroline at 8:56 AM | Comments (3)
March 10, 2008
Sweet treats for work: Lemon Traybake
After the success of last week's Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares, I decided to move on to something lighter and more fruity for this week's sweet treat. I'm have been reading Annie Bell's Gorgeous Cakes recently - the Mallow library is coming up trumps for brilliant cookbooks - and I have plenty of recipes bookmarked to try. Annie is not afraid of using her kitchen appliances and, after finally getting a kitchen to call my own, I now have both food processor (one of the first birthday gifts from the not-yet-Husband - he knew how to set up things for future baking happiness!) and KitchenAid mixer out and at my disposal. This recipe uses the food processor, taking minutes to put together although, if I were in my NZ kitchen appliance-less days, it would also be manageable with a wooden spoon, although I have to say that I avoided any creaming recipes for the whole year I was living there. I'm sure it would also work with any mixer at your disposal.
Moist and crunchy when fresh, getting steadily damper although no less tasty as it sits in the tin, this Lemon Traybake got a resounding thumbs up from my main testers - the Husband and the Polish Colleague. Now to figure out next week's recipe!
Lemon Traybake
Butter - 225g, diced and at room temperature
Caster sugar - 225g
Eggs - 3
Milk - 150g
Self-raising flour - 225g
Baking powder - 1½ teaspoon
Lemons - 2, zested and juiced
Demerara sugar - 100g
Preheat the oven to 190˚C for conventional ovens, 170˚C for fan ovens and butter a swiss roll tin (30 x 23 x 4cm).
Using the blade attachment on a food processor, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Drop in the eggs, one by one, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go along then add the milk and blend into the mixture.
Sieve the flour and baking powder together then, with the processor running, gradually spoon into the funnel, continuing until everything is incorporated, adding the lemon zest at the end.
Scrape and pour into the prepared tin and level the surface. Bake for 30 minutes, until firm, golden and, when tested with a skewer, it comes out clean from the centre. Using the skewer, prick the cake all over. Mix the lemon juice and Demerara sugar together and spoon over the warm cake. Allow to cool on a wire cake rack and cut into squares or slices when cold.
Adapted from Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell.
Posted by Caroline at 6:30 PM | Comments (7)
March 4, 2008
Sweet treats for work: Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares
Nowadays, with a little breathing space and a (slightly) more regular routine, I'm on a mission to expand my cooking horizons and explore the years of stored up recipes. I finally have all my cookbooks in one house, albeit still scattered between the kitchen shelf, a corner of the table in the living room, piled up next to the computer, along the sides of the stairs and filling the recently-built shelves upstairs in what is supposed to be my office (these days it's still too cold to heat more than the main living room!).
So, surrounded by cookbooks, I try to use new recipes, especially on my days working from home when I fill the tins so that there's something nice to take to work for the Husband, myself and my workmates. I spent a while stuck in a Flapjack rut, but, that now mastered, I've moved on. The criteria are simple - whatever it is has to be quick to make, good to eat with my morning cup of coffee in work and, very important this, happy to sit in the tin for about a week. Here's the latest try-out, adapted from Sue Lawrence's On Baking.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares
Self raising flour - 285g/10oz
Baking powder - ¼ teaspoon
Dark brown Muscovado sugar - 227g/8oz
Peanut butter - 113g/4oz, preferably sugar free
Eggs - 2, beaten
Butter - 113g/4oz, slightly softened
Icing:
Dark chocolate - 142g/5oz
Peanut butter - 85g/3oz
Desiccated coconut - 57g/2oz
Preheat the oven to 180˚C - or 170˚C for a fan oven. Butter the sides and base of a 23 x 33cm/9 x 13 inch swiss-roll tin.
Put the flour, baking powder and Muscovado sugar into the bowl of a mixer. Mix the peanut butter and eggs together and add to the bowl with the butter. Starting slowly so that the flour doesn't scatter, beat the mixture together to make a thick batter. Scrape into the prepared tin, smooth with a spatula and bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, until the edges are slightly firm and a skewer comes out cleanly from the centre.
Place on a wire rack and allow to cool for 10 minutes while preparing the topping.
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. When melted, add the peanut butter and desiccated coconut, mix well and spread across the still-warm base, levelling off the top.
Cut into squares before the chocolate sets and allow to cool in the tin.
Makes 30 squares.
Posted by Caroline at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
Our Grannies' Recipes
Eoin Purcell of Mercier Press in Cork (the same company, incidentally, that are publishing Kieran Murphy's Ice Cream book) has set about putting together a collection of recipes of traditional Irish family favourites. Everyone is welcome to contribute recipes from their own granny - or granddad! - and Our Grannies' Recipes will be published in October, with €1 from every copy going to Age Action Ireland. You can read more about it and take a look at the first few recipes here.
Posted by Caroline at 10:57 AM | Comments (1)
March 3, 2008
Irish Blog Awards 2008
Congratulations to Lorraine at Italian Foodies - the winner of this year's Best Food/Drink Blog at the Irish Blog Awards! Kieran of Ice Cream Ireland was also a winner, taking the Best Business Blog award. You can read about all the winners on Maman Poulet, herself also a joint winner in the Best News/Current Affairs category. Sounds like a good night was had by all!
Posted by Caroline at 11:35 PM | Comments (2)
March 1, 2008
Irish Blog Awards - tonight
Best of luck to all the nominees, particularly those in the Food and Wine category, for this year's Irish Blog Awards! It's all happening tonight at the Alexander Hotel in Dublin but, the fact that this North Cork-based blogger works on Saturdays, combined with a visit from the Brother-Who-Lives-In-London means that I won't be able to make it to this year's event. Looking forward to hearing all about the winners, though!
Posted by Caroline at 7:27 AM | Comments (0)
