I made cake! I think? I think it counts.

[st_aurafina]

Something I cooked recently:

Gateau aux prunes, or, fancy plum cake. Becuse the plumber brought plums.



I don't know what variety of plums they are - they're the same kind that my Nana had in her garden. (The taste was very nostalgic for me.) They were small and sweet, and the flesh was deep red, but not as dark as blood plums.



The cake has almond meal in it which gives it a lovely texture, and the top is brushed with jam when it's hot out of the oven. I didn't have plum jam so I used raspberry, but that worked well.



It has a long cooking time, so I put it on, then went swimming. When we got back, the house smelled amazing, and there was a cake!

I think I had success because there were specific instructions for lowering the temperature in a fan-forced oven, and because I didn't use the silicone loaf pan of consistent failure.

Anyway, it tasted great! I wish we'd had some nice yoghurt to eat it with, because it had a lovely tartness that would have been delicious with something creamy.



Four-Grain Bread from kindkit.

Considering I stuffed all the rising times, and then by the time I had to cook it, the cast iron pot was full of lamb curry so I cooked it freeform on a tray, this came out pretty well! The bread had a lovely, chewy texture, and the flavour was good. The crust was a little tougher than I like, but I think that came from cooking it on a tray, not enclosed in a pot, though I did put some water in the oven to give it as good a chance as I could.

I need to figure out a concrete plan for the long rises, and once I've done that, I can see this becoming a weekly habit.


Oh, and I made calzones, thanks to lostdragonfound's Recipe Friday post - I put beef, onion, tomato and cheese in mine. They went well, except that I had way too much dough and way too little filling. But that's easily tweaked next time around.



Something I have solid plans to cook soon:

Peanut butter oat cookies.
I want cookies. With peanut butter. And now that I know I can chop rolled oats into flour with the blender, I can give these a go.

Also, this recipe from the back of the sultana packet:

Muesli Bar Slice


1 cup of sultana (oops, I ate these ones! Guess I'll use raisins.)
1 cup dried apricots (which I don't have, but I suppose I'll use dates. Or I think I've got some glace ginger.)
1 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup oat bran
1/2 cup bran cereal
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup plain flour
60g butter
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 180C (I'll probably go for 160C, since fan-forced.)

Mix fruit, seeds, oats, oat bran, cereal and flour in a bowl.

Melt butter, honey and sugar together. Add to dry ingredients. Stir, add egg and milk, combine well.

Press into greased and lined slice tray (28x18cm.) Bake for 15 minutes. Cut into slices when cool.




Something I'm idly thinking of cooking in the future:


Turkish Lamb Pizza

Guh, this just came across my dash. I don't know if I'm protein deficient or what, but I want to eat that right now. I'll probably tweak it by using slow-cooked lamb shredded up. It looks so good!


Man, it's just occurred to me that when we eventually move into this new house, I'll have a gas cooktop. All my knowledge of basic stuff will have to be re-established. Bleh. Still, maybe the oven will be more predictable.

Comments

[lonelywalker]

I think if I lived near you, I'd surreptitiously invite myself over all the time. Even though a lot of your stuff has nuts in it, I'd enjoy the smells!

the silicone loaf pan of consistent failure
Suddenly I feel bad for a pan. *imagines it slinking off dejectedly to blog*

[st_aurafina]

I would make you something deliciously death-free, I promise. No anaphylaxis cakes.

The pan deserves everything it gets. It has let me down too many times. It is a pan of shame.

[lonelywalker]

That's very kind of you! Cake or death, not cake and death.

The pan is going to take night classes and join some other profession.

[kindkit]

The way I handle the rising times is: mix the dough in the morning and refrigerate all day, take it out of the fridge for the first rise at night, then do the second rise and bake the next morning. That's why I always bake on Friday, because I have the day off. But you can also refrigerate again after the loaf is shaped for the second rise, so if you didn't want to bake in the morning you could do that, then un-refrigerate it and let it rise that evening and bake that night.

One other advantage of doing the first rise at night is that it's cooler than, which slows down the rise and is better for flavor. The speed of the second rise, on the other hand, doesn't make much difference to the flavor.

I'll have a gas cooktop

Gas cooktops give better heat control, though, so that's an advantage.

ETA: I didn't know Australians ate peanut butter! I always thought the rest of the world looked on it (unfairly) as something yucky that only Americans would like.

[st_aurafina]

I was going to ask you for a timetable - thank you, that's really useful.

I have heard that about gas! We don't have it on tap like in the city, though, so I'm going to have to learn the routine with checking the meter on the bottles and ordering more. Which is no big deal, but I can see us getting stranded at least one time until we get the hang of it.

I would have intuitively said that we got the peanut butter habit around WWII when the GIs came, but when I googled, apparently we've had peanut crops since the Chinese came over in the gold rush. But the crops were tiny until the 1940s, so I guess I'm at least partially right about the GIs. Our peanut butter is much less sweet than US, or so I'm told.

[kindkit]

The big mainstream brands of peanut butter in the US are sweetened, but there's increasing demand for the unsweetened kind and you can find it almost anywhere. (Though, as seems to be the way of things, you have to pay more for it.) I always use an unsweetened brand that's just peanuts and salt.

I suspect, though I haven't researched it, that even in the US, peanut butter didn't become commonplace until the Second World War and meat rationing.

[weaverbird]

So much good food. And yay cake! Your cake demons are on the run. *g*

I think you'll love a gas cooktop. Infinitely adjustable heat, and instant response when you do so - IMO it's soooo much better than electric!

[st_aurafina]

Yay, cake!

A few people have said that about the gas - I'm looking forward to it, but I'll have to learn the palaver of checking the bottles and ordering and so on. I bet we run out at least once.

[clare_dragonfly]

Oh, man, those plums look so good. I don't even care about the cake, give me the plums! It's going to be months before we have any plums around here...

[st_aurafina]

I wish I could send you some plums! I don't know where he got them from - he's been giving bags and bags of them away. The mysteries of the plum-stealing plumber!

[vass]

That is a very good looking cake. \o/

I've been fiending for meat too. I made my lazy person rissole things for dinner tonight: 500g of lean minced beef mixed with one egg and a good shaking of cumin and coriander powder, shaped into 16 very small, very flat patties and shallow fried on medium with a bit of olive oil until very brown on both sides, and then served with salsa. Makes lots.

Probably not suited to people who have taste in meat, but it satisfied my cravings: SALT! PROTEIN! FAT! CHILLI! MAILLARD REACTION!

[st_aurafina]

Mmm, never underestimate the power of the rissole. Best leftovers ever!

[lostdragonfound]

That cake looks awesome!

I've had the Armenian version of the lamb pizza (Lahmajoon is what we call it...I'm half Armenian), though it's been ages. My dad used to go down to Watertown which had a "little Armenia" area and get a package of it periodically and we'd heat it at home. It was really good. Someday I may try making my own.

[st_aurafina]

Ooh, I googled 'lahmajoon' just to look at the pictures and drool.

I think it's probably pretty easy to make, given that I do my own pizza dough? I don't have sumac on my spice shelf, but it shouldn't be hard to get.

[mergatrude]

Caaaaake! That looks so good!

And the best recipes DO come from packets, don't they? I am three weeks behind with Recipe Friday, and half of the stuff I've made have come from there.

I love cooking with a gas stovetop, as it gives you a bit more control.

[st_aurafina]

It's so true about the back of packets - I got my baked cheesecake recipe from the back of a cream cheese box.

I am actually excited about ooking with gas now - everyone has been really positive about it.

[lilacsigil]

No, I'm sorry, this doesn't beat your cake demons. You must keeping trying. I will test the results for you, don't worry.

[st_aurafina]

I promise to work on it harder! More cakes! For science!

[kaffy_r]

The lamb pizza looks wonderful; my only problem is that BB isn't a lamb fan, and I don't like cooking just for myself. I shall eventually convince him to try lamb again - maybe this sort of dish would appeal to him more than the lamb stews I love.

Are you currently an all-electric kitchen? I've been cooking with gas since I came to Chicago. Before that, I had all-electric ovens and stoves, because in the sections of eastern Canada where I grew up, hydro-electric power was so plentiful that no one used gas. I only heard of gas-powered anything when I grew up.

[st_aurafina]

Mmm, lamb stew is so good. Your BB is missing out! Come to Australia - lamb is more popular than beef here. Do you do lamb and barley stew? With big chunks of carrots and potatoes? Ugh, so good. I can't wait for winter.

Yes, we're all electric - even though there's a gas pipeline going past us, there's no gas mains in town, because it all goes straight to the cities, bah. So, if you use gas you have to get those ginormous bottles delivered on a regular basis, and I can pretty much predict we'll run out right in the middle of cooking something.

[kaffy_r]

I was going to say I had never heard of people dealing with gas without a direct link to a pipeline or gas network, but then I changed my mind; I can undoubtedly think of placed in North America where that might be the case.

I grew up with both lamb stews and lamb curry, both cooked by my Nana. The latter was definitely a product of growing up in a very anglophile household (my Grandad was an RAF pilot in WWI) and, in the context of the extremely mild cuisine that was otherwise our daily lot, was an interesting one to have taken hold. Somewhere in my Nana and Grandad's past, they'd been exposed to British style cooking that had been exposed to cuisine from The Jewel In The Crown. I'm still a little amazed today, but always happy about it.

(And when I make any stew, you'll find carrots and potatoes and onions and yes, at least occasionally, barley, although I also sometimes use (of all things) Israeli couscous as a thickener.