MAB – Page 16 – Deja Food

Cracked Wheat Bread

Something a little different this week – not just an unusual recipe but also a method of baking a loaf that might be new to you.

It’s called baking ‘under tin’ and is very useful if your loaf is decorated on the outside with seeds or grains, as it prevents them from becoming over-coloured in the high heat necessary for baking bread. It’s not just for use with speciality loaves, however, it is also useful for creating a very regularly-shaped loaf for making sandwiches, etc or keeping a delicately-crumbed loaf of enriched or milk bread from over-browning. You can splash out and buy a special sandwich tin with a lid that slides on/off (also known in the US as Pullman Tins), but it’s not necessary. Ideally, the tin would have vents in the lid to allow the steam to estape, but inverting a solid tin is fine – since the tin isn’t weighted down, any steam can escape from under the edges.

The other interesting aspect of this week’s post is one of the ingredients. I found the recipe for cracked wheat loaves in Walter Banfield’s classic book “Manna”: A Comprehensive Treatise on Bread Manufacture (1937). The cracked wheat is used both in the dough itself and also to decorate the outsides. I decided to adapt the recipe slightly in order to use an ingredient I picked up recently but had yet to use in anything – freekeh.

Freekeh a cereal made from air-dried and roasted green wheat and is popular in the middle east. It can be used as an alternative to rice or couscous, or substituted for bulgur wheat in tabbouleh salad. It is available in a couple of UK supermarkets, and also health food shops and online. It needs only a brief amount of cooking in water in order to soften it. If you zoom in to the picture, you can just make out the little yellow nuggets of chewy freekeh dotted through the slice. They make for great texture and add a pleasantly nutty flavour. This loaf is also nice made with half freekeh, half bulgur or all bulgur if you can’t find freekeh anywhere.

Whilst you can choose any flour to make these loaves, my recommendation is for strong brown flour (pictured) or malted flour. 100% stoneground wholemeal is tasty, but extremely dense. If you want the grains to be more noticable, you could mix 1/2 brown and 1/2 white, or experiment with rye, barley and other unusual grain flours.

Cracked Wheat Bread

100g freekeh, bulgur wheat or a mixture of both
500g strong brown flour
10g salt
EITHER 15g fresh yeast mixed with 5g brown sugar until liquid OR 1 sachet fast-action yeast.
warm water to mix

50g freekeh and/or bulgur wheat for coating

Put the 100g of freekeh into a small pan, cover with water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes then drain. If using bulgur wheat, there’s no need to pre-cook, just cover with water and allow to soak for 30 minutes, then drain.
Add the drained freekeh or bulgur to the rest of the dry ingredients.
Add sufficient warm water to bring the dough together.
Knead for 10 minutes, then cover the bowl with plastic and allow to rise until doubled in size (about an hour).
Prepare the 50g freekeh and/or bulgur wheat in a similar manner and drain.
Grease a large loaf tin. The tin should be slightly larger than you would normally use for a loaf of this quantity of flour.
When the dough has risen. turn out of the bowl and deflate by patting gently.
Fold the edges into the middle and form the dough into a loaf shape. The top should be smooth and the seam underneath. Use as little flour as possible. The surface of the dough should be tacky to the touch.
Scatter the prepared grains over the work surface and roll the loaf of dough over them to coat. If there are any patches, pat the grains onto those areas by hand.
Put the dough into the loaf tin UPSIDE DOWN – that is, with the seam uppermost – and set aside to rise for about 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
When the dough has risen almost to the top of the tin, lay a sheet of parchment over the top of the loaf tin and lay a baking sheet on top. Carefully invert both loaf tin and baking sheet so that the upside-down loaf tin is on top of the baking sheet, and the dough completely enclosed.
Slide a second baking sheet under the first and put all into the oven. The second sheet will help prevent the bottom of the loaf becoming too crisp.
Bake for 45 minutes, until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.
Turn out of the tin and cool on a wire rack.

Cinder Toffee

17th century, 20th century, Sweeties

Here’s another recipe that can, be part of a home-made Christmas, either for nibbling at home or prettily wrapped in cellophane as a gift, or indeed any suitable gift-giving time.

It can also be customised in a number of ways, as I shall detail below, be it in the ingredients you choose or the finishing touches you employ.

Honeycomb recipe from a 17thC manuscript (MS1511) dated 1682 in the Wellcome Library — Honeycomb recipe from a 17th century manuscript (MS1511) dated 1682 in the Wellcome Library

Cinder toffee is a traditional UK sweetie recipe which has been around for centuries, and early recipes can be found in household manuscript books from the reign of Charles II. Recently, it has seen a return to popularity under the name Honeycomb Toffee. Whilst a more appetising name, perhaps, unless you actually make it with honey, it is, to my mind, a bit misleading, whereas you have only to glance at the Wikipedia page for cinder to see that the appropriateness is evident in both looks and definition.

The toffee is made by bringing a mixture of sugars to the Hard Crack stage and then quickly stirring in a small amount of bicarbonate of soda to produce effervescence. The mixture is then poured into a suitably prepared tin and as it cools, the air bubbles are trapped in the sugar, thus giving it its distinctive structure.

Having read numerous recipes online, it is fairly safe to say that the most popular combination of sugars is caster sugar and golden syrup. This gives a bright, golden toffee reminiscent of the insides of a modern Crunchie bar. Whilst delicious, the flavour is, however, very one-note, and extremely sweet, and I got to pondering how it might be improved.

I found a recipe in F.Marian McNeil’s The Scots Kitchen (1929) for Black Man, a version of cinder toffee made with treacle, and kin to the Yellow Man of Northern Ireland. Made solely with treacle and bicarbonate of soda, it would definitely have the dark, bubbled appearance of genuine cinders, however in experimentation, the treacle proved exceedingly bitter as well as being much too easily burnt.

I liked the idea of using more complex flavourings to make the toffee and so I have come up with a base recipe for cinder toffee, with suggestions of how to adjust it for variety and interest. By varying the sugars and syrups, the range of flavours can be quite extensive and with more time at my disposal, I believe similar subtleties could also be achieved using honey as the liquid sugar. Feel free to experiment yourself!

Base Recipe Components

Choose your main flavouring from either the solid sugars or the liquid sugars. For example, malt extract and caster sugar, Demerera sugar and golden syrup. Both together, e.g. treacle and dark muscovado, is too dark and will burn to bitterness.

Solid sugar: This can range from fine, white, caster sugar, granulated sugar, soft light brown, soft dark brown, Demerera, light muscovado, dark muscovado all the way through to molasses sugar. The varying degrees of colour have a bearing on the eventual flavour which becomes richer and more caramelised the darker you go.
Liquid sugar: Any sweet syrup liquid at room temperature can be used including golden syrup, molasses, maple syrup, treacle, agave nectar, malt extract, honey.
Butter – for richness
water – to help dissolve the sugar
cream of tartar/liquid glucose – to help prevent crystallisation
bicarbonate of soda – for the bubbles! This recipe only uses a teaspoon, which, if properly stirred through, is more than enough to produce sufficient bubbles. Using more will produce more vigorous frothing, however, it will also become more noticeable in the flavour of the toffee, as well as being trickier to stir through without clumping.

Presentation Suggestions

Plain: Cinder toffee is delicious in it’s simple, unadorned state, but will absorb moisture from the air if left exposed. Once cooled, it should be stored in an airtight box or ziplock bag to keep from becoming sticky.
Dipped in chocolate: To keep the toffee crisp without the need for airtight storage, you can dip pieces in melted chocolate and set aside to cool. Although this will serve admirably, it will have a tendency to melt in the hand. The solution is to temper the chocolate, instructions for which abound on the internet. Whilst milk chocolate is the most popular pairing, you can experiment with a whole range of flavours from white through to the extremely dark. The sweetness of the cinder toffee made with caster sugar and golden syrup can be offset to a certain extent by dipping in dark (at least 60% cocoa) chocolate, not to mention the very pleasing contrast of the golden toffee against the dark chocolate. Similarly, the bitterness of treacle cinder toffee can be lightened by the use of white chocolate flavoured with lemon zest.
Made into cinder coal: This is the most fun. By tossing the chocolate-coated cinder toffee pieces into some black caster sugar, they immediately become, to all intents and purposes, little pieces of sweet coal, and thus the embodiment of their name.

How to make black sugar

The intense colour provided by modern gel food colouring is ideal for creating vibrant coloured sugar. Although we’ll only be using black the principal is the same for making any shade of coloured sugar.

1tsp black food gel colouring
200g caster sugar.

Pour the sugar into a small zip-lock bag and add the food colouring gel.
Seal the bag and gently massage the sugar against the gel. It will gradually take on an intense colour whilst still remaining separate grains.
Continue massaging the sugar until it is evenly coloured throughout. If the shade is too light, add a little more gel and repeat the massaging motion.
The coloured sugar will keep in the ziplock bag for weeks.

Cinder Toffee

110g caster sugar
110g treacle
30g unsalted butter
2tbs cold water
1 pinch cream of tartar or 1/2tsp glucose
1tsp bicarbonate of soda

Line a roasting tin with parchment paper.
Put all of the ingredients except the bicarbonate of soda into a non-stick saucepan and warm gently until the sugar has dissolved.
Increase the heat until the sugars boil. Continue heating without stirring until the syrup registers 150°C on a thermometer.
Tip in the bicarbonate of soda and mix briskly for 5 seconds, ensuring the powder is well incorporated.
Pour the frothing mixture onto the baking parchment in the tin and leave to cool. You can speed this up (and thereby trap more bubbles in the toffee) by putting it into the freezer for 15 minutes.
When completely cold, tap gently to break into bite-sized pieces.

To cover with chocolate

Melt or temper 200g of your chocolate of choice.
Drop pieces of cinder toffee into the melted chocolate and use a fork to lift them out.
Tap the fork briskly on the side of the chocolate bowl in order to shake off excess chocolate.
Lay the coated pieces on parchment paper to set.
Store in an airtight container.

To make cinder toffee coal

Whilst still wet, drop the chocolate coated pieces into the black sugar and toss to coat.
Lift out the coated pieces and lay onto a wire rack until set.
When completely cold, toss the pieces of coal gently in a wire sieve to remove excess sugar.
Store in a ziplock bag or wrap in cellophane bags for presents.

Apricot Jam

17th century, Preserves

I’m a big fan of the sharp-sweet tang of apricots, and with a respectable amount of pectin, there’s no need to Faff About™ adding any extra. The small quantity lemon juice helps anyway, both in the set and in sharpening the flavour of the apricots.

This method, gleaned from several hand-written 17th century manuscripts, is slightly longer than your regular jam-making session might be, but it is seriously low on effort. Start-to-finish, it’s about 24 hours, but of that, there’s maybe only 1 hour of actually doing anything – bonus!

The result is so vibrant, so delicious, you’ll wish you’d made more – however many jars you make. I bought 6 x 350g punnets – and made six jars. One jar of finished jam for every 350g of raw fruit is also a handy way to work out how many jars your going to need. As a precaution, I always have one jar extra, all cleaned, heated and ready to go, in case of an overabundance. I’ve scaled the quantities down to use just 1 kg of fresh, pitted fruits (so 3 punnets from the shop), so it’s a little easier to scale up/down.

This method involves first macerating (or soaking) the fruit in sugar for several hours (or even overnight). The sugar draws out the juice from the fruit, and in turn a little of the sugar is absorbed. This absorption of sugar will help to firm up the fruit and keep it from disintegrating during the necessary boiling later on.

That being said, this is not a solid jam that has to be crowbar’d out of the jar (a particular dislike of mine). It’s definitely leaning more towards the conserve, although having sliced the fruit to manageable bite-sizes, I think that disqualifies it from the traditional definition of conserve (i.e. whole fruit in syrup).

ANYHOO….

Here’s how it goes:

Apricot Jam

3 x 350g punnets of Bergeron (for preference, but not compulsory) apricots, to give 1kg of prepared fruit
800g granulated sugar
Juice of 2-3 lemons
Day 1

Rinse the apricots and cut into halves, top to bottom, and remove the stone.
Layer the apricot halves, sugar and the juice of 2 of the lemons in a large bowl ensuring the cut surfaces of the apricots are covered with sugar.
Cover the bowl with cling film and set aside for 8-10 hours, or overnight.
Mop brow and declare loudly to any interested parties “This jam-making is EXHAUSTING! I must have a REST and watch a FILM”.
Put feet up.

8 hours later, or next morning if you started at night

Gently slide the apricot mixture (which will probably be quite runny by now) into a preserving pan and warm gently, until all the sugar is melted.
Try and avoid stirring, as the fruit will still be very fragile and might begin to break apart with too much spoon action.
When all the sugar is melted, bring the mixture to a boil.
As soon as it boils, remove the pan from the heat and gently pour the fruit mixture back into the bowl.
Re-cover with cling film and set aside overnight.
Mop brow and put feet up as above.

12-14 hours later

Here’s where things might get a little too Faffy™ for your liking, feel free to skip the next part if you prefer a slightly more rustic jam.

Removing the skins
- Strain the fruit from the syrup. I prefer to lift the aricot gently with a skimmer, to avoid squishingthem too much, but you can pour it through a sieve if you like.
- By this time, after their overnight soaking, the skins should be wrinkled and easy to separate from the flesh of the apricots. I usually start by picking up an apricot half by the skin in my left hand and then using a small, sharp knife to ease the flesh away. Sometimes the cut edge of the apricot next to the skin has hardened and needs a little encouragement to come free. If your apricots have a slightly thicker skin, this may not be as easy as described. In this case, give up.. Persevering will only mash the apricots to mush.
- Discard skins.
Using some sharp scissors, cut the now skin-free apricots into strips about 0.5-1cm wide. Again, feel free to skip this if so inclined. It just makes the jam easier to spread. Set fruit aside for now.
Once the fruit is prepared, it’s time to boil the syrup to setting point.
But before you start heating it, taste. I like a particularly sharp jam, so I tend to add the juice of another lemon at this stage if necessary. Taste the syrup and make your own decision.
Also, put 2 saucers in the freezer. These will be used later to test whether your jam has reached setting point.
Pour all the syrup into the preserving pan and bring to a simmering boil. Keep an eye on it, as too high a heat may cause it to boil over.
Skim the froth from the top of the simmering syrup – removing this will help give your finished jam that jewel-like clarity. Don’t throw the foam away, it’s still delicious, just bubbly. Enjoy on toast with some salty feta or goats cheese – NOM!
Setting point is reached at 105°C, when the excess water has evaporated – there will be a distinct lack of steam coming from the pan, but use a thermometer to double-check.
Add the apricots, sliding them gently into the syrup. It will immediately go off the boil, and as there will be quite a lot of syrup clinging to the apricots themselves, it will take several minutes to come back to setting point.
Use this time to wash your jam jars, rinse and arrange onto a baking sheet, together with their lids.
Put the jars into a cold oven, and turn the heat to 100°C, 80°C Fan.
When the jam has reached setting point for the second time, draw the pan to one side away from the heat and test the jam by putting a teaspoon onto one of the cold saucers from the freezer. Return the plate to the freezer for a minute or two then remove and slowly push a finger through the cooled jam. If the surface wrinkles, then the jam is done. If not, return to the heat for a few more minutes and test again.
Once the jam is set to your satisfaction, turn off the heat and leave it to cool a little. You want it to be cool enough to begin to form a thin skin on the surface. This means that it is starting to set, and you should put it in jars. Depending on how big a batch you’re making, this could be as long as 20 minutes. Have a cuppa while waiting!
Stir the jam gently, to distribute the fruit throughout the syrup. Now that the jam has cooled a little, the fruit will stay suspended evenly. Stirring when the jam is too hot will do nothing, and pouring too-hot jam into jars will just make all the fruit float to the top.
Remove the hot and now dry jars from the oven and, using a jam funnel, pour your jam into the jars. You might want to use oven gloves to hold the jar steady. Fill the jars as close as possible to the top – to within 5mm at least (bacteria love air gaps, so you want to keep them as small as possible).
Screw the lids on tightly and then wipe off any spillage from the outside of the jars. Leave to cool completely before labelling.

Apple Bread

19th century, 20th century, Yeast

This recipe was copied from the Ipswich Journal into the manuscript book from a Norfolk household in the early 19th century. The manuscript was eventually purchased by the Wellcome Library and its contents digitised and made available online, which is where I discovered it. It was the simplicity of the recipe that appealed – just 3 ingredients: Flour, yeast, apples. I immediately mixed up a batch and was delighted with the results – a lovely open textured bread with a bite/chew similar to sourdough, but with a delicate, underlying sweetness which, when toasted, almost tasted like honey. It went brilliantly, un-buttered, with some strong cheddar and a crisp apple.

Original Recipe — Source: MS3082, Wellcome Library Collection

To continue the week of coincidences, I later found this recipe reprinted word for word in my 1950 copy of Farmhouse Fare, recipes sent in to and collected by Farmer’s Weekly magazine. Which means that someone else copied the same recipe from the Ipswich Advertiser and kept it alive in their family for 150 years to be revived in 1950. Utterly delightful!

It’s a regular in this household – I hope you enjoy it also.

Apple Bread

500g strong, white bread flour
1 sachet easy-blend yeast or 20g fresh yeast
4 Bramley Apples

Put the apples in a saucepan and cover with water.
Bring to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes until the apples are soft and cooked. The skins might split, but as long as the water is just simmering, the apples should hold together – fast boiling water will only get you apple soup.
Lift the apples from the water (you might need some water later). Remove the skins and scrape the cooked apple flesh into a bowl.
Sieve the cooked apple to make a smooth puree. If using fresh yeast, you can crumble it into the puree and whisk until thoroughly mixed.
Put the flour and dry yeast into a bowl and stir to combine.
Add the apple puree gradually and stir to combine into a soft dough. You should need between 250-300g of apple puree. If you need more liquid, use some of the water the apples were cooked in.
If you have a mixer with a dough hook, work the dough for 10 minutes on the lowest speed. Otherwise, work it by hand, but be careful not to add too much flour in the kneading – you want to keep the dough nice and soft.
Put the dough in a bowl, cover and leave the mixture to double in size.
When sufficiently risen, tip the dough out of the bowl and knock back.
Shape into loaves and put into a 1kg greased loaf tin.
Cover lightly with a cloth and leave to rise for a further 30-45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and the base sounds hollow when tapped. If the bread appears cooked, but not sounding hollow, remove from the tin and return to the oven for 5-10 minutes to crisp up.
Cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

Traditional Stuffing

20th century, Tracklements

Here’s something that very often gets neglected next to the flashy stars of the Christmas meal – stuffing. If I could get just one of you this year to refrain from buying a cardboard packet and to try this instead, then I’ll be happy-clappy.

Traditional stuffing is so simple – basic, almost (breadcrumbs, onions, herbs, stock) – yet it can really add to and enhance a main meal more than ingredients costing ten times as much.

When it comes to the traditional roast meal, though – I have a problem with where it goes and how it usually gets served up.

I understand that, packed inside the poultry of your choice, it’s supposed to impart flavour, but what invariably gets dished up is a big glop of solid stodge to eat alongside some dried up old bird (and I’m not just referring to myself here).

In fact, the more I think about it, the more illogical it seems:

We calculate the cooking time for a lump of meat based on its weight, and filling it with stuffing obviously adds to that weight. If you cook a bird according to its ’empty’ weight, then the stuffing remains a thick lump of glop. If you calculate cooking time based on the ‘stuffed’ weight, by the time the stuffing is cooked through, the meat is dried out.

So I say: stuff stuffing the stuffing – cook it separately. That way both the meat and the stuffing can get cooked to perfection and everything is right in the world.

You can bake it in a big slab, or roll it into balls and let it cook around the outside of the meat. Personally, I like to cook it in a bun/ muffin tin, in individual portions: the outside gets crispy and crunchy, and the inside remains moist and juicy. Traditonally, stuffing contains suet – but I prefer to replace it with butter for two reasons: it means vegetarians can enjoy it as well (make sure you use vegetable stock), and it still tastes great when cold. Cold, congealed suet is not a good taste in anything. So today’s handy hint is: Avoid suet if you’d like to continue to enjoy your stuffing cold.

Traditional Stuffing

Makes 12 portions

2 onions
50g butter
225g breadcrumbs (4-5 slices)[1]
1 heaped tsp each of dried parsley, sage, thyme, oregano
1/2-1 tsp dried rosemary
salt & pepper
200ml stock
1 egg

Grease your muffin tin well.
Chop the onions and cook gently in the butter until softened and translucent.
Put all the other ingredients into a bowl.
Mix in the softened onions and any butter left in the pan.
The mixture should be moist enough to hold its shape when pressed together.
Spoon the mixture into the tin and press down gently. I think the crunchy bits on top are the best bits, so I use a fork to just rough up the surface.
Bake at 200°C, 180°C Fan for 45 minutes.

[1] Stale/dry breadcrumbs are fine – use a little extra stock if you think the mix is too dry.

Fat-free Mincemeat

18th century, Preserves

This recipe is adapted from Hannah Glasse’s 1747 recipe for Mince Pies for Lent.

Nowadays, we traditionally make mincemeat far in advance of the festive season, so that it can mature in flavour. Both the sugar and the suet act as preservative and so when Christmas rolls around, you’ve got a jar of deliciously spicy sweetmeat and not a fizzing, fermenting jar of goo.

The downside of course is having to be organised enough to remember to make it far enough in advance, making enough for those unexpected baking moments (such as surprise visitors, or a last minute school bake sale contribution), and not making too much so you have storage problems. Quite apart from it not being suitable for either vegetarians or vegans.

Here, hopefully, is a solution. No suet means it’s vegetarian and vegan. No added sugar means its more suited to people needing to control their sugar intake, for whatever reason – although there IS sugar in the candied peel, so this isn’t quite a sugar-free recipe. Best of all it doesn’t need maturing, it’s literally mix and go.

The mixture is gently warmed and the fruits absorb the sherry, brandy and fruit juices. The finely-chopped dates break down and bind everything together. The result is packed full of flavour and with a much cleaner and fresher taste. This mix makes just under 500g of ready-to-use mincemeat.

NB This will keep for up to a week in the fridge, but no longer. Cooked as mince pies and frozen – up to 3 months.

Fat-free Mincemeat

50g currants
50g raisins – crimson raisins look pretty
50g sultanas
50g dates – finely chopped
25g candied orange peel [1]
25g candied lemon peel [1]
25g candied grapefruit peel [1]
35g dried cranberries
25g flaked almonds – chopped
2tbs sherry
1tbs brandy
juice & grated rind of an orange
pinch of ground ginger
a grating of nutmeg,
pinch of ground cinnamon
pinch of mixed spice
pinch of ground cloves

60-100ml apple juice

Put the dried fruits into a small saucepan.
Cut the candied peel into small pieces with scissors and add to the pan with the spices. NB If you’re using your home-made candied peel that has been stored in syrup, then there’s no need to soften it in the saucepan – just stir it in with the nuts once the fruit has plumped.
Add the orange juice and zest, brandy, sherry and 60ml of apple juice.
Stir gently to combine and set pan over the lowest possible heat.
Cover and let the mixture stew gently until all the liquid has been absorbed.
If the fruit isn’t as plumped and juicy as you would like, add a little more apple juice.
The mixture should be moist, but with no liquid visible in the bottom
When you’re happy with the consistency, stir through the chopped, flaked almonds.

[1] If you’ve made some candied peel yourself, then these are pretty straightforward. If not, then use 75g of what you have/can get. Buy whole peel pieces if possible – they retain their flavour much better than chopped – and cut them just before use.

Candied Peel

17th century, Preserves

A forgotten art in British preserving is home-made candied peel. ‘But I can buy that!’ you shriek. Yes, I know. But if you’ve ever tasted fresh candied peel made with nothing more than sugar, peel and water – you’d understand. I used to hate store-bought candied peel, and avoided anything that included it, but home-made just blows it out of the water. The explosion of citrus flavour is amazing. The beauty of making it yourself is that you can candy any citrus peel you like, and not be limited to just orange and lemon. So here, for anyone who fancies having a go, is how to do it, gleaned from 17th century manuscript recipe books. It’s not difficult or complicated, but it is a bit repetitive. But make a decent amount at one time, and you won’t have to repeat it for a good few months. Oh – and it’ll make your house smell amazing.

How To Candy Peel

Citrus fruit of choice
Sugar
Water

Remove the skin from the fruit. Slice off the top and bottom (to make a flat surface to stand the fruit on) and then cut the peel from the sides of the fruit by slicing downwards. Keep as much of the pith as possible.
Scrape any flesh and membranes from the fruit rind. Don’t worry if you can’t get it all, it’ll become easier after the peel has been boiled. Leave the pith intact – it’s the pith absorbing the sugar that keeps the rind juicy and helps prevent it becoming hard.
Place the rind into a pan large enough to hold it plus an inch of water. Cover with clean water.
Bring water to a boil and boil for a minute or two then drain.
Rinse the peel thoroughly, and also scrub the sides of the saucepan thoroughly as well. Why? The bitterness of the peel comes from the citrus oil in the skin of the fruit. Bringing the water to the boil helps release this oil, but it then floats on the top of the water, coats the rind when the water is poured off, and also congeals onto the sides of the pan. If you don’t rinse the peel and scrub the pan well, you just end up basically boiling the peel in the bitter citrus oil, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of repeated boilings.
Repeat until the peels are semi translucent and very tender. This will greatly depend on the type and condition of the fruit itself, but as a rough guide, lemons = 4 times, oranges = 5 times, grapefruit = 6 times.
Leave in a colander to drain well.
While the peel is draining, make some sugar syrup: mix 1 part water to 2 parts sugar. 500ml water to 1kg sugar is straightforward, but might leave you with a lot of leftovers, if you’re not making much peel. Not very helpful I’m afraid, but to my mind, it is better to have a little extra syrup, than have to make more once you’ve added the peels because there isn’t enough. I usually guesstimate by eye – and use non-standard measures (i.e. large mug or jug) and just measure by volume.
Heat the sugar and water slowly until the sugar is dissolved, then bring to a boil and continue to heat until the mixture is clear.
Squeeze excess water from the peels by pressing them between several layers of kitchen roll – or I find that using a clean hand towel works best – they’re surprisingly soggy peels!
Scrape off any remaining flesh and membranes using the side of a teaspoon and cut the peels into 5mm strips.
Once the syrup is clear, drop in the drained peel. Make sure that there is enough syrup to allow all of the rinds to be submerged.
Bring syrup and rind to a boil then cover and put onto the lowest heat. Let it stew gently until the rinds become translucent and jewel-like (almost like coloured glass). Stir occasionally. This takes about an hour. Don’t be tempted to turn up the heat to speed things along, it’ll just harden the peel.
Store the candied peel in screw-top jars, making sure it’s completely covered by the syrup. This will keep it moist until required, and the high sugar content of the syrup will act as a preservative. When you need to use it in a recipe, rinse off the excess syrup and pat dry with a paper towel.
Any excess syrup can be bottled and saved to drizzle over cakes or desserts. It will have a wonderful flavour.

Coconut Gingerbread Cakes

19th century, Small Cakes

Gingerbread is such a classic teatime treat – and I’m a huge fan of classics – it’s just that I don’t usually feel very inspired when I hear the word ‘gingerbread’. I think of a treacle-dark cake, rich, sticky and aromatic with ginger – sounds delicious, no? – but the main thing that springs to mind is something akin to a brick slab.

It probably goes back to the large, family bakes of my childhood, where the cake-of-the-week was kept wrapped in foil in a tin and slowly chiseled away at during the week until it was all gone. There wouldn’t be another cake until this cake had been eaten, and it used to lurk in the tin in all its brickiness, standing between me and any other baked treat. The chances were high that it would eventually be replaced with something equally heavy and fruity – but that new cake’s attraction would be, initially at any rate, mostly due to the fact that it wasn’t the gingerbread.

The image of heaviness and brick-like shape has lurked in my culinary memory ever since – which is a shame because what it SHOULD bring to mind is crisp winter nights, spiciness and fireworks, treacle-richness and bonfires. So I thought I should try and rehabilitate it, and bring it up to date. Ironically, I achieved this by referring to a recipe over 165 years old, from Miss Eliza Acton.

Heroines of Cooking: Elizabeth ‘Eliza’ Acton (1799 – 1859)

Originally a poet, Eliza Acton is considered by many to be the first to write a cookery book as we would recognise it today. Her Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845) was the first to separate a list of ingredients from the methodology, and was aimed specifically at small households. Additionally, the author’s observations on potential problems and recommendations for subtle variations were included, illustrating Eliza’s personal experience with the recipes, unlike many of her contemporaries and cookery authors that were to follow. It was an immediate success and remained in print for almost 60 years. She was to write only one other book The English Bread Book (1857), in which her strong views against the adulteration and processing of food would still be being echoed by Doris Grant almost a century later.

After several experimental baking batches, here is Eliza’s recipe for Coconut Gingerbread Cakes, scaled down to a manageable quantity. Baked in a mini muffin tin, the recipe makes approximately 24 bite -sized cakes with all the dark richness of traditional gingerbread, with the added coconut giving both a lighter texture and more complex flavour. Fresh coconut is a little time consuming to prepare, but very much worth the effort.

Coconut Gingerbread Cakes

Makes 24

75g plain flour
75g ground rice
2 tsp ground ginger
grated rind of 1 lemon
110g treacle
40g butter
40g dark brown soft sugar
80g fresh grated coconut

Mix flour, ground rice, ginger and lemon rind in a bowl and set aside.
Put the treacle, sugar and butter into a saucepan and heat gently until the butter is melted and the sugar dissolved. Remove from the heat.
Add the dry ingredients to the warm treacle mixture and stir to combined. Stir in the coconut and then set mixture aside to cool.
Heat oven to 120°C, 100°C Fan.
Divide cooled mixture into 20g pieces, roll into a ball and drop into greased mini-muffin cups.
Bake for 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
Keeps very well in an airtight box/tin.

Banoffi Pie

20th century, Pudding

I’d just like to take a moment to discuss a modern British classic pudding: Banoffi Pie.

Yes, Banoffi. Not Banoffee.

That’s just one of my little niggles regarding this dessert that have ultimately led to this post.

Done properly, to the original recipe, it is a classic, sophisticated and delicious dessert, worthy of a dinner party.

But it rarely IS done properly and, over the years, I’ve seen it churned out on television in worse and worse variations, until this past week when I saw an absolute shocker and so I was propelled into making this post just to set the record straight if nothing else.

I’m convinced that the fatty, over-sweetened mess that Banoffi Pie has evolved into, puts off a lot of people, which is a shame. Hopefully, if they can be persuaded to try it as it was originally conceived, they might just become fans.

I’ve mentioned in a previous post how Banoffi Pie came into being, and one of the co-creators has also published online the back-story as well as his original recipe.

Even though I am a fan of the original recipe, I’m going to change it a little.

I know, I know……I realise I’ve just spent three paragraphs banging on about people changing recipes, but in my head this is ALLOWED – because in the past I have actually eaten original recipe Banoffi Pie. Over the years I’ve developed a personal rule of first trying a recipe in it’s original form, out of respect to the original author. That done, you can tweak it how you like, but make it their way first. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the results.

Once you’ve tried the original recipe too, you can pop back and we’ll carry on.

Back already? Excellent.

Before we begin, lets just have a quick whizz around the components, which gives me the opportunity to bang on about those too:

Pastry Base: Yes, contrary to popular belief, the original recipe called for a sweet, shortcrust pastry, which is actually ideal for this dessert. We’re going to draw a discrete veil over the crushed biscuit-and-butter and (my personal bête-noir) chocolate-biscuit-and-melted-chocolate bases, which push this dessert into being sickly. The filling is so rich and sweet, having the dry, crumbly pastry is a perfect foil. I actually have a copy of the original recipe published in the second book of recipes from the restaurant where it originated ( “The Deeper Secrets of The Hungry Monk” ) which just specified ‘shortcrust pastry’. This I interpreted as carte blanche to use whatever recipe I liked. What I have for you here is the original sweet cornflour pastry which I adapted to a savoury version for the Cheese and Potato Pies. It has that extra crispness that a regular all-butter pastry lacks.

Filling: I’ve seen some people get very precious about the caramel “I make it all by hand!” they cry, ladling in the butter and cream. However, these caramels tend to be rather runny, and to be blunt, the filling can be doing without all that fat. The original is much simpler and is obtained by simmering unopened tins of sweetened, condensed milk for an extended length of time. This can be done in a variety of ways, but my method of choice is in the slow cooker because you can leave it unattended, and it won’t boil dry. Cover the tins with water, set it on Low and leave it for 8 hours. You can simmer them longer, up to 12 hours, and the caramel will gradually become darker the longer it is left in the water. The caramel in the picture was taken out of the slow cooker after 8 hours. In the UK, the most well-known producer of milk products (Carnation) have recently started selling tins of caramel. These are great if you need a dessert at short notice, but I find the caramel isn’t quite as firm as when you make it yourself, as well as being, to my taste at least, a great deal sweeter. If convenience is what you’re after, I suggest simmering more than one tin at a time and keeping the home-made spares in the cupboard.

Banana: This addition/improvement transformed Blum’s Coffee Toffee Pie into Banoffi Pie. The banana is laid on top of the caramel and underneath the cream, NOT on the pastry base. This would make spreading the caramel very difficult, as the sliced banana would stick to the caramel and slide about. And no, they don’t go on top of the cream either, because they’ll just turn brown and become very off-putting. And if you DO put them on top of the cream and then throw chocolate on top to disguise the browning, you’re fooling no-one. One variation that meets with Ian Dowding’s approval is to replace the banana with a thickened apple puree, making an Appleoffi Pie. Made with sharp, cooking apples such as Bramleys, I can just imagine the delicious contrast in both flavour and texture, although I’d probably leave out the coffee from the whipped cream for this version.

Coffee Cream: Yes, coffee cream – whipped cream flavoured with coffee. So often this is replaced with plain whipped cream, or even vanilla flavoured cream, to the dessert’s great detriment. And, contrary to Mr Dowding’s original, in my opinion the coffee cream should be unsweetened and strong to the point of bitterness. Using espresso coffee powder turns it into a fantastic counterpoint to all the sweetness in the caramel and bananas, as well as lifting the dessert into dinner-party status. Coffee can do that. It’s almost as if it’s status as a grown-up flavour, confers adult status on everything it touches.

Chocolate for sprinkling/garnish: Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Nellie!? Whaddya doin’? You can’t go introducing a new flavour and shoving it on top of the pie just because you feel like it! Coffee, banana and caramel flavours are plenty busy enough, thankyousoverymuch! If you must sprinkle anything, a light dusting of espresso coffee powder is all the garnish it needs.

Baking Tin: You can make this dessert in any size and shape tin you like. A 20cm round tin, preferably with a loose bottom to help ease out the cooked pastry case, is traditional, but this time I used my loose-bottom rectangular flan tin (13cm x 35cm), which means the finished dessert can be neatly cut straight across in elegant, finger slices and the different layers are clean and clearly visible.

The Original(ish) Banoffi Pie

Pastry
60g cornflour
225g plain flour
140g butter
1 large egg
85g icing sugar
ice-cold water

Put all the ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Gradually add the water, one tablespoon at a time, until the mixture comes together in a ball.
Knead smooth, then roll out thinly.
Line your chosen tart tin, easing the pastry into the corners/sides.
Leave the excess pastry overhanging the sides and chill in the fridge for 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
Remove the tin from the fridge and, now that the pastry has relaxed, trim the excess from the sides.
Prick the bottom of the tart tin with a fork.
Line the tin with baking parchment and weigh it down with baking beads/rice.
Bake for 12 minutes, then remove from the oven and take out the parchment and beans.
If the edges are already brown, cover them closely with foil and return the tart to the oven until fully baked (10-15 minutes).
Set aside to cool.

Filling
1 tin sweetened condensed milk turned to caramel, cooled

Unless you’re making a huge (30cm+) tart, then one tin is all you’ll need. Warmed carefully, it’ll spread a long way and a 1-2cm layer is rich enough for a treat without becoming sickly.

Open the cooled tin and tip into a small saucepan.
Warm the caramel gently until it becomes smooth and pourable.
Pour the warm caramel into the cooked pastry tart shell and spread it evenly over the base.
Lightly grease some clingfilm with butter and lay it closely over the caramel.
Chill until required.

To Assemble
300ml double cream
1tsp instant espresso powder + extra to sprinkle
2-3 bananas

Whisk the cream and coffee powder together until firm peaks.
Slice the bananas and lay a thin layer over the caramel.
Cover the bananas with the coffee cream. I like to just spoon it over, and keep it light and billowy, but if you prefer something more formal, you can pipe it. What you must do, is ensure that all the banana slices are completely covered. Just like the meringue on a lemon meringue pie, make sure the cream goes right to the edge of the tart, touching the edge of the pastry. Any banana left uncovered with start to discolour very quickly, but covered with the cream they remain delicately pale.
Dust the top lightly with espresso powder and chill until required.

Muffins

18th century, Yeast

Bread muffins are quintessentially and traditionally British and have a very particular appearance – golden brown on their flat tops and bottoms, with a broad band of pale softness around the middle. Recipes can be found at least as far as the mid 18th century, but there seems to be a lack of anything older. I suspect the reason for this is that muffins were traditionally made by bakers as opposed to the home cook, and therefore had no place in domestic cookery books. So – a professional baker might well have been the original source of Hannah Glasse’s muffin recipe.

Heroines of Cookery: Hannah Glasse (1708 – 1770)

Hannah Glasse is best known for her cookbook, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published in 1747 and constantly in print for almost 100 years – although her authorship was allegedly only definitively established in the 1930s. She wrote in a very no-nonsense manner, advocated the use of fresh, seasonal, inexpensive ingredients and made her opinions regarding pretentious and wasteful foreign cooks known in no uncertain terms:

“So much is the blind folly of this age, that they would rather be imposed on by a French booby than give encouragement to a good English cook.”

The Art of Cookery covers all aspects of food preparation in a straightforward and concise manner. Impressively, Hannah also includes chapters on preserving meats, bottling and pickling, tips on how to buy fresh produce at market and also includes a seasonal calendar of fruits and vegetables. Free digital copies of her famous book are available here and here.

I think Hannah must have been quite a character. Her recipe is entitled “To make muffins and oat cakes” – but in enthusing about the proper way to make muffins, she wanders off at a tangent and gets so distracted, that the oat cakes are never mentioned again. She even goes so far as to include instructions for building the cooking surface upon which you are supposed to do your muffin cooking. On one point, however, she is most clear: knives should not be used on muffins. Toast them whole and then tear them apart by hand, and be rewarded with pillowy-soft, honeycombed centre, but…

“…don’t touch them with a knife, either to spread or cut them open, if you do they will be as heavy as lead…”

Muffins

Makes 12-15 small muffins

420ml whole milk
50g butter
1 tsp salt
2 tbs granulated sugar
1 large egg
3 tbs potato flour [1]
400g strong white bread flour
1 sachet instant yeast
rice flour, for shaping (optional)[2]
semolina, for cooking (optional)

Cut the butter into small dice and add to the milk. Heat gently (microwave/saucepan) until the milk is warmed and the butter melted.
Put all ingredients except the semolina and the rice flour in the bowl of your stand mixer and knead slowly to combine. Continue kneading for 5 minutes.
If the dough is looking stretchy and shiny, then cover and leave to rise for 1 hour. If not, add more(3-4 tbs) flour and knead for another 5 minutes. Cover and leave to rise.
Tip out the dough and knock it back (i.e. pat it down to deflate).
Divide dough into 80-100g pieces and shape the dough into balls.
Heat your pan over a low heat. Do not add any grease or oil.
When the whole pan is of an even heat, scatter semolina into the bottom of the pan if liked.
Use a fish slice/spatula to move the muffins into the pan turning them over as you do so.
Cook gently until the undersides are nicely browned – between 5-8 minutes – then use your spatula to turn over the muffins.
Cook the second side for a slightly shorter time. If you’ve made a test muffin, you can pull it apart to check the insides are fully cooked.
The semolina helps keep the muffins from sticking to the pan, but it does get very browned, so wipe the pan clean after every batch and add fresh semolina before the next batch.

[1] Available at health food stores, Holland & Barrett, Oriental food shops.
[2] I got this tip from Elizabeth David’s book English Bread and Yeast Cookery. The rice flour dries the surface of the muffins without making them sticky or leaving clumps, so the excess is easy to brush off. If unavailable, substitute with cornflour or just use regular flour.