i am not the Ace of Cakes

Posted on April 23, 2012 by lisadurbin

I think if I could produce things as I see them in my mind, I’d be awesome. My Draw Something pictures would be hilarious and astonishing. So when a friend asked me to do her daughter’s 1st birthday cake, several ideas immediately popped into my head and I took on the task with great optimism. She wanted baby blocks with her daughter’s name on them which I discovered, after a quick poll with Friends Who Bake, would cost a small fortune if made entirely out of fondant. I thought of covering cake blocks with fondant, but knowing my cake-covering skills (i.e. none), I looked at alternatives. After a bit of Googling and thinking about stuff I’d seen on TV, I got the idea to cover Rice Krispie treats with fondant. That Duff guy off Ace of Cakes does it all the time and it looks super easy!

[Friends and family, I beg of you: in future, please whack me with a cast iron frying pan when I say things like "that looks super easy!" Because it won't be and it'll save me hours of pain and swearing. Thanking you in advance.]

First I had to make the treats, which is something I’d never done before. How someone can spend 30 years of their life in Canada and not make these, I’ll never know. I looked up a recipe and cut out the blocks, ensuring they were big enough to fit my Tappits letters. Tappits are a great idea, but absolutely rubbish in practice. It’s a series of letters and numbers laid out in a row like a ruler that you use with fondant. You roll the fondant out very thinly, press the letter cutter on it, and hey presto, you’ve cut out a letter. Except that the icing sticks to the inside of the intricate cutter and if you try to tap, poke, or pull the letter out, you end up with a Salvador Dali-esque blob with decorative swirls. Eventually, I managed to get enough letters out that didn’t look like they’d melted in the sun.

I got the very clever idea (get that frying pan ready) to cut out the fondant to cover the treats with a square cutter. This would give me nice clean edges and a uniform size. Here is a list of things I learned:

Don’t move the icing after it’s been cut. Roll out the icing on to greaseproof paper and cut directly on the paper. Otherwise, the squares will be SO NOT SQUARE after you move them.
Let the icing dry for at least two days before attempting to stick them to the blocks. If you don’t do this, you will get bumpy blocks. Stucco blocks. Not nice blocks.
Cut the treats slightly smaller than the size of your icing squares. Most sensible people would do this. Took me three tries to figure out why my square sides didn’t line up properly. If I was a bird, I’d be slamming into your patio doors repeatedly right about now.
Use royal icing to stick everything together because it hardens well and helps level everything out. Buttercream sucks. Don’t use it. The sides will go all slidey.
Don’t pick the damn things up after you’ve painstakingly assembled them. Your fat fingers will leave imprints and make cracks. Leave them for at least two days, until completely dry.

Here are the blocks. They are awesome blocks. Fuck yeah, BLOCKS.

And then I made the cake. And I put the blocks next to the cake:

Arse.

macarons/macaroons/heeeeyyy macarena!

Posted on March 13, 2012 by lisadurbin

I have learned three things this week:

There are French macarons, English macarons, coconut macaroons, and nobody seems to agree on how you spell or pronounce macarons. Macaroons. Whatever.
French macarons aren’t nearly as scary to make as I thought.
You can shove at least three macarons in your mouth and they dissolve into nothing, therefore, they are a diet food.

My friend Annalisa urged me to try making macarons, and suggested I follow the recipe for chocolate macarons from the Ottolenghi cookbook. She assured me that they weren’t difficult to make, although this is a fact you should keep to yourself when presenting them to other people. Due to time constraints and lack of funds, I didn’t buy the book and did a bit of online research instead. I came across a few recipes based on the Ottolenghi macarons, but with various tips, cooking times, oven temperatures, and a plethora of other information. With fingers crossed and trial and error, this is the recipe and method I used:

Chocolate Macarons
110g icing sugar
50g ground almonds
12g cocoa powder (I used Green and Blacks)
2 (60g) egg whites
40g caster sugar

Sift the icing sugar and cocoa powder in to a large bowl. In a food processor, pulse the ground almonds until they are a little bit finer. (Don’t overprocess or else you’ll end up with almond butter. Trust me on this one.) Most recipes suggest that you then sift the ground almonds, but I could never get mine fine enough to fit through my sieve. So don’t get too stressed about this step, but go for it if you can get it to work.

In a very clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until foamy. Add the caster sugar a teaspoon at a time, and whip the egg whites until they are very stiff and glossy. Apparently you can overbeat the egg whites and it’ll all go horribly wrong, but I beat mine within an inch of their little eggy lives and they turned out fine. For another batch, I just dumped the sugar in one go and the meringue still worked. I think people make it out to be far more difficult than it needs to be, just to get extra accolades when they present you with the finished product. But I digress.

Fold the almonds, cocoa powder, and icing sugar into the beaten egg whites. One site I saw said 10 strokes. This wasn’t nearly enough. Another said 25. That was about right. Does it really matter? Not really. Just fold everything together until it flows like lava. Isn’t that poetic? Basically, it’ll be thin enough to be able to pipe, but not so thin that it’ll all come dribbling out of the piping nozzle in one go. You want a floppy whipped cream sort of thing.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner. You can use a tablespoon to blob the macarons on to the baking sheet, or you can use a plain 1″ nozzle and a piping bag. Whatever floats your boat. These were for baby shower game prizes, so I got a bit anal about them and wanted them to look uniform. Pipe or blob them on until they’re around 2″ wide. Give the baking sheet a couple of hard whacks on the work top to get most of the air bubbles out. Preheat the oven. I eventually figured out that mine worked best at 160C (fan assist), but your oven may vary. (Mine tends to run a bit hot.) Let the macarons sit on the work top for around 1/2 hour until they form a skin (i.e. when touched, your finger doesn’t leave a mark or stick.)

Bake the macarons for 14-18 minutes, turning halfway through. Mine took 14 minutes, but again, your oven may vary. I tried a few different cooking times and it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I would say that 14 minutes is probably a minimum. Let the macarons cool completely on the tray before you try to remove them. No, really. REALLY. Don’t touch. Go have a cup of tea and leave those things alone. If you let them sit happily and cool down, they will peel off in one tidy piece, like the macaron on the left. If you get impatient, they leave their bottoms on the baking sheet, like the macaron on the right. A bottomless macaron is a very sad thing. Don’t do it.

Just have a little patience.

If your bottoms still stick even after cooling down, then they’re undercooked. Sorry about that. Once completely cooled, let them sit on a wire rack for a little while while you prepare your filling. I used a chocolate ganache recipe from Joy of Baking and discovered that substituting white chocolate for dark just doesn’t work. It won’t set and it’ll cause great annoyance. I had to add icing sugar to mine and turn it into a buttercream, which tasted fine in the end.

Nekkid!

I also made some plain (dyed) macarons using this recipe from The Telegraph, and filled them with the white chocolate ~~ganache~~ buttercream with an added splash of Baileys. I wanted them to have the same pretty brightness as the ones in the photos, but the colours all seemed to pale after baking. I think you need to add a shedload of food colouring (I used gel colours) and assume they will get lighter after baking. The pink ones turned out okay, but the purple ones looked very grey.

The one in the front was white, but went through the wash with a black sock.

In the interest of science, I also tried out David Lebovitz’s recipe for chocolate macarons for comparison. They were equally delicious, but came out much thicker and puffier than the Ottolenghi macarons. The photo that accompanies the recipe should have tipped me off to that, really. At any rate, they were fine but I prefer a slightly thinner macaron when sandwiched together.

What I love about macarons is that they look pretty and they can be made ahead of time. Once filled, you can keep them in the fridge for about a week. (Take them out of the fridge before serving, though. They’re not as nice cold.) But of course if your friends ask, you spent all morning slaving away at them and holy CRAP, they were SO hard to make. THAT’S how much I like you.

As a final note, BraveTart’s Macaron Myths is a must read before embarking on these things. Lots of fantastic information that takes the fear and mystery out of macarons.

cottage pie, with added vegetable stealth

Posted on February 17, 2012 by lisadurbin

Cottage pie is one of those comforting, cold weather dishes that used to be a staple in our house back in The Days of Eating Potatoes. Now that we’re not eating them as much, I sort of forgot about cottage pie and moved on to other things. Sorry, little pie. Cauliflower “faux mashed potatoes” have been around for a long time; I first encountered them when I did the Atkins diet in the 90s. And mashed potatoes they were certainly NOT. The recipe I followed produced a big pot of watery, mashed up cauliflower. *yuck face*

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when someone posted a link to a cauliflower mash recipe via the photographically fabulous Nom Nom Paleo. She raved about it, saying that her mash-loving boyfriend enjoyed these and never suspected that they weren’t potatoes. Curious, I gave them a try. And mashed potatoes they were certainly almost. Amazingly, they were dry, fluffy, and didn’t taste like cauliflower. I think they work so well because there’s no added liquid and the cauliflower is drained very well. Other recipes tend to treat the cauliflower like potatoes, calling for huge lumps of butter and cream. This gave me an idea – to try them atop my old friend cottage pie (or “shepherd’s pie” as it’s often called in North America) and they worked beautifully. The cauliflower even went a little brown on top, like a traditional pie.

There are a lot of variations on the bottom layer, but this is how I do it:

500g steak mince
1 yellow onion, diced
2 ribs of celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
Red wine (about 1 large glass)
400g tin of tomatoes
1tbsp tomato puree/tomato paste
Worcester sauce
Beef gravy (optional)
1 star anise
Salt and pepper

Brown the steak mince in a little oil with some salt and pepper. Drain and put aside.
In the same pan, saute the onion, celery, carrots, and garlic. Fry for a few minutes until the vegetables start to soften.
Add some red wine and bring it to a boil. Let it reduce until it’s almost completely evaporated.
Add the meat back to the pan. Add the tin of tomatoes and tomato puree (tomato paste.)
Add a few dashes of worcester sauce, and bring to a simmer.
If you have any leftover beef gravy, add about a cup at this point. If not, don’t sweat it. A little beef stock (homemade or from a cube) works well, or even just a bit of water.
Add the star anise (thank you Heston Blumenthal for that tip – it really does do amazing things to dishes that have minced beef in them. Seriously, try it.)
Let the meat mixture simmer for a minimum of 20 minutes, but you can leave it for up to an hour or two on very low heat (covered.) Season to taste. Remove the star anise.
Leave the mixture to cool. It’s easier to spread the mash (potato or otherwise) on top when it’s cooled down a little. You could do this a day ahead, too.
Bake at 180C for around 30 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the pie is bubbling hot.

Cauliflower: "You ain't seen me. Right?"

We served it to the kids without telling them that it was cauliflower. Normally I’m not a fan of hidden veg, because when I’ve tried that before, it’s just created trust issues.

“What’s this green thing?”
“What green thing?”
“The green lump in my spaghetti sauce.”
“Oh. That. It’s…just part of the sauce. It’s supposed to be like that. Just eat it.”
[Child eyes me suspiciously and meticulously dissects everything he eats from that moment on.]

This time, I was curious to see if they’d like it without the refusal to even try it. They absolutely devoured it. My son tipped the plate up and slung the pie into his mouth with a shovel-like fork action. Look at them – they have no idea. Hahahahahaha SUCKERS.

Stealth vegetable mission: complete.

Fish pie is another old favourite, so the cauliflower mash will get another outing on that one someday. In the meantime, I have to keep my son off this site – he’s a pretty good reader these days.

cake pops: everybody’s doing it, why aren’t you?

Posted on February 3, 2012 by lisadurbin

I don’t even remember how I came across the concept of cake pops. It’s just something that sort of floats around the Internet like out of focus mobile phone pictures of celebrities’ naughty bits. I thought cake pops looked easy and fun. How cute, a ball of cake on a stick coated in a candy I’ve never heard of before and costs a small fortune in the UK! It’s cake! ON A FREAKING STICK. Isla’s naming ceremony was approaching and I wanted something a little different for the celebration. I envisioned a large styrofoam structure with cake pops sticking out at jaunty angles. Our guests would find it kooky and amusing.

I did a little research and it seemed that only a few simple steps were involved:

Make a cake. Hell, don’t even do it from scratch! Crumble.
Mix in icing.
Form into balls.
Put the balls on sticks.
Dip the balls in Candy Melts.
Decorate in whatever manner you’d like.

Lies. All lies. What it actually involved was the following:

Buy a box of cake mix. Feel a little guilty and yet strangely nostalgic (as my mom never made cakes from scratch.) ~~Crumble.~~ Let cool 24 hours and THEN crumble. Why? I don’t know. The Internet said so.
Mix in icing.
Form into balls.
Put the balls on sticks.
Dip the balls in Candy Melts.
Balls fall off the sticks into the Candy Melts. Do more research.
Put balls in the freezer for a few minutes to harden. Dip sticks in Candy Melts for extra adhesive power.
Dip the balls in Candy Melts. Balls still fall off the sticks, although some manage to stay on.
Let dry. Candy Melt coating cracks. Do more research.
Put balls in the freezer, but not for too long because very cold cake pops make the coating crack. Heat the Candy Melts but not too much because very hot Candy Melts make the coating crack. Swear. A lot.
Dip balls again. Notice that the cake balls are not at all round and look quite a lot like meatballs.
Do more research to find alternatives to cake pops. Give wonky cake pops to uncritical small children who find them both amazing and delicious.
The saddest cake pop in town.

Look at it. Even the sprinkles are droopy. For some insane, masochistic reason, I do want to try making them again. It’s probably more of a “I will not let the tiny cake defeat me!” type of motivation rather than actually wanting to make a batch of cake pops, but when they’re done well, they are very cute. But for now, my cake is served on a plate and sticks are reserved for kebabs.

Roman style chicken

Posted on February 1, 2012 by lisadurbin

I’m stuck in a chickeny rut. I roast it, I stick it in a curry, or sometimes I bake it with chorizo. Most of my beloved chicken dishes incorporate a lot of starch, so now that I’m only having chicken au naturel with a side of veg, I’ve been a bit stumped. Chicken is not the most exciting protein* out there, and I find it difficult to come up with ideas. I came across a recipe for “Roman style chicken” on the Food Network site that looked quite interesting. Normally, I steer clear of anything that involves Giada de Laurentis, mostly because of her massive teeth:

"Rrrrrrri-COH-ta!"

See? I don’t lie. The recipe did look good and didn’t have a photo of her scary Jaws of Over-annunciation next to it, so I gave it a try. It was easy, delicious, and approved by all family members. You could put this on pasta or rice if you want to stretch it out, but I served this on its own with roasted potatoes for the kids and probably something green for us. (It was a while ago and I have no short term memory anymore.) If I had any on hand, I would have added some olives to this as well. The sauce is rich and thick, heavy with the flavour of tomatoes. The proscuitto adds a good level of salt, so give the sauce a taste before seasoning at the end. And the kids actually ate the peppers. Good stuff all round.

*(I only like using the term “protein” because they say it on “Top Chef.” I do not, however, ever refer to “plating up”.)

poached eggs, AKA early morning science class

Posted on January 12, 2012 by lisadurbin

I have eggs almost every morning which, I fully admit, gets on my nerves after a while. I really need to come up with more imaginative ideas, but that would require brain power that I don’t have at the moment. So eggs it is! Last night, we watched the eggs episode of “How to Cook Like Heston [Blumenthal]” on channel 4 and it inspired me to try new techniques for my arch nemesis: poached eggs.

Back in the old days, I was happy to poach eggs in one of those metal cup tray things you place on top of a pan of boiling water until they were like rubbery hard boiled bullets. Along with vegetables cooked within an inch of their lives, this is the food I knew. Actually, everything I was fed was massively overcooked, probably because people thought it would kill us otherwise. We weren’t all that food savvy back in the 70s, it must be said. Eggs poached in just a pan – No cups! No holders of any sort! – is a pretty new concept for me. I never trusted it to work and most times, it didn’t. I tried the Water Vortex where you swirl the hot water around with a spoon rapidly so that it creates a vortex in which to put your egg. This led to a really swirly egg soup, but a lousy poached egg. Then I added salt to the water. Then I read that you should NEVER put salt in the water as it breaks the egg down. Then I added vinegar to the water because it supposedly keeps the white together, which led to another egg soup, but with a vinegar aftertaste. Finally, I learned that the eggs must be fresh. Like right out of the chicken’s backside that morning fresh. Tesco doesn’t have hens laying eggs in the stockroom, so this just wasn’t going to happen for me. As is expected when you’re over 40, I only have old eggs. Old, sad eggs. I switched to scrambled and omelettes.

In Heston’s recipe, simplicity is the key. Reading through it, it actually seems deceptively fussy (put a plate in the bottom of the pan? Whaaa?) but I tried it this morning with a bit of the fuss taken out.

I used a candy thermometer as I brought the water up to temperature, but I think you could probably do this by eye once you see what the water looks like at 80C. It’s not quite to the boil, and bubbles just start to form at the bottom of the pan. Quickly put the pan on to a very low flame and add the eggs, cooking for 4 minutes. I think the key is straining the eggs through a perforated spoon. I never knew that old eggs have very watery whites, which is what gives you that “egg soup” effect. I cracked the egg on to the spoon, let the watery white drip through into a bowl for a few seconds, and slipped it into the pan. Four minutes later, these lovely non-vinegary eggs appeared when I gently lifted them out.

Here's looking at you!

Not the most attractive picture due to a very grey, bleak morning (and my complete lack of photographic knowledge), but you can see how tidy they came out.

I think if you can get your hands on very fresh eggs, you can just chuck them into some hot water without thinking too much about doing anything else, and they’ll be just fine. For supermarket eggs, I think this method is fantastic. And now I can say I’ve done a Michelin-starred recipe.

obasan

Posted on September 19, 2011 by lisadurbin

Most of my childhood memories are related to food: the smell of certain things cooking, the taste, the anticipation, the dread (sorry Mom, but your beef stew was diabolical), and the special dishes we only had on holidays. Being of Japanese descent, we had a hybrid of Canadian and Japanese food at the family table during holidays. Thanksgiving meant turkey, mashed potatoes, sushi, chow mein, and little rice crackers (senbei) in pretty lacquered dishes to nibble on while we waited for supper. We had “popcorn tea” (genmaicha green tea that tasted like popcorn) and chewed on dried seaweed in thick, salty slabs. When my Great Aunt Grace was still alive, there was also manju. They looked beautiful, perfect little soft doughy parcels in pastel colours, but they were deceptive. Cutting into one, you’d expect it would taste like chocolate or something equally pleasant, but it was actually filled with sweetened bean paste. This was very much akin to my first experience with sparkling water as a child, when I took a large swig expecting it to be Sprite. To this day, I still hate sparkling water. It’s such a let down.

Going to my grandparents’ house was such a highlight of my childhood. My grandmother always made far too much food, and we always left their house with a bag full of carefully wrapped leftovers in Red Rose tea boxes. I watched her roll sushi with ease, putting the cooling rice in front of an electric fan because it made it glossy. She trimmed off the ends and popped them into her mouth, which was probably the only thing she ate during holiday meals because she was so busy cooking and serving everyone else. She was a quiet woman, which made her loud, excited exclamation “IT’S A RICE COOKER!!” as she opened her Christmas present one year especially memorable. And she put garlic in everything. Meatloaf, soups, gravy, everything. It’s not surprising that her chicken noodle soup cured all, because it was heavily loaded with garlic. She sprinkled something called “Accent” on everything she cooked, which we learned was MSG many years later. MSG and garlic will probably keep us all very well preserved.

I never did get her sushi recipe from her. I don’t know how she prepared the vegetables for the filling, so my sushi doesn’t taste the same. My Grandma made these wonderful, soft, chocolate and vanilla “pinwheel” cookies that none of us have been able to replicate, as the original recipe was never found. I now find myself making notes in my cookbooks and carefully writing down recipes I often make and organising them in binders. I bring the kids into the kitchen when I cook and I explain what I’m doing and why. Like my almost obsessive need to photograph every moment of our lives, I need to record these moments in the kitchen. There is a huge hole in my heart since my Grandma died, and when I cannot recreate the culinary memories, it makes it feel even bigger. So whether or not my children will ever make my chilli, beef and Guinness stew, or chocolate cake, I feel better knowing it’s all there in case they do.

My Grandma died 20 years ago last month, which is so hard to fathom. I can still hear her voice and see her nodding sagely in the rearview mirror as you spoke (she always sat in the back if we took her out anywhere in the car), and I remember how her house smelled in the morning (frying bacon and coffee.) Dried squid, grape juice, sunflower seeds, a pot of tea immediately placed on the table at the end of every meal, pound cake (with an extra egg), and an unlimited supply of DelMonte goods. I remember. I wish you were here to show me how to make sushi.

Yoshiko Hotta (1948, age 26)

The Test Kitchen

Where things go boom.