My crimes against cooking: Allegations of Bad taste

Woke up in a bit of a grump this morning. The Toddler came into our room at an early hour demanding company and then started accusing me of waking him up ! So to cheer myself up on the journey into work I started remembering past times in the kitchen – but got distracted by memories of culinary experiments, some of which were quite funny, which at least made me giggle and got me into a better mood.

As mentioned I do have Form for slightly eccentric cooking. Show me a recipe with unusual ingredients and I find it hard to resist the temptation to try it.

The charge sheet

Minty Pea Pops (from The Toddler Cafe) – these are meant to be ice lollies made of cream cheese, chocolate drops, pureed peas and peppermint essence. These were not a success, the Teenager now, after having experienced these, asks me everytime I offer him cake or something he hasn’t tried before asks “It hasn’t got peas in it has it ?”. Toddler was not impressed either, and he loves peas. I tell myself that his rejection was based on his dislike of mint (insists on strawberry or banana toothpaste, boy will he have problems cleaning his teeth when he’s older)

Sweet Potato and Marshmallow from Feast (Nigella Lawson) This is just cooked sweet potato, with some lime juice baked with a layer of mini marshmallow across the top which gets kinda baked and caramalised and slightly toasted. Having thought that this was the sort of thing that both Toddlers and Teenagers couldn’t get enough of it turned out that neither of them would touch it.

Creamy Carrots –(Apples for Jam – Tessa Kiros) sounds innocent enough but it was not appreciated in this house. My fault, I didn’t have any parsley so I used tarragon. But to be quite honest I think carrots are nice enough without adding cream, you just need butter and black pepper.

Beetroot Cake This one worked, as long as I didn’t tell anyone what was it it before they tried it. I guess it’s the same principle as carrot cake, but because in the UK beetroot is usually eaten soaked in vinegar, its difficult to overcome people’s fears and get them to try it. It came from Nigel Slater’s Observer column and I carried the newscutting around for several months before I did it, fresh beetroot is not something it is easy to find in the shops out of season (because there’s no demand for it), so I guess this cake wins on the food miles stakes too. It was too tempting to resist as it also had orange blossom essence in it, so how could I not make it ? The thing that I don’t like about it is the linseeds, but that’s just me. I don’t like the sensation of small hard seeds in my teeth so no dried figs in my christmas pud ! If I did it again I’d just up the amount of sunflower and pumpkin and leave out the linseed.

There are no doubt many many more crimes and I’m sure that if the Toddler could read, or I pointed the Teenager at this site they would remind me of many more eccentric mixtures I’ve tried out on them. But these are the ones that I can remember over the past 2 years, and besides sometimes the journey to work is only 15 minutes long.

The Orange Blossom Special

I have been baking a lot recently. I think it’s because usually I make cakes for celebrations and associate cake with being happy, so when I am depressed or unhappy I bake to cheer myself up. Oddly enough I don’t feel the need to eat what I’ve made as if I’m honest I prefer something savoury.

The first time I cooked myself to a better mood was April, it was the week I stumbled on the most amazing recipe for Sussex Pond Pudding [recipe here] (which I subsequently made, but with disastrous results (a story for another time)).

The problem with needing to bake away depression is you don’t necessarily have the opportunity to go shopping for missing ingredients and it’s a matter of taking pot luck with what’s in the cupboards. So possessing as I did almost the entire worlds harvest for cashew nuts 2007 (they weren’t the freshest of nuts admittedly) a cashew heavy recipe was required and Google shortly provided

One of the first things to come up on Google was Allegra McEvedy’s Orange Blossom, cashew and semolina cake [recipe here]… I just loved the idea of it, I think it was the orange blossom that did it, as it always sounds so exotic and the idea of a fragrant cloud of orange blossom scenting my kitchen as the cake baked made me forget that I almost always have been disappointed in the things I’ve made using it.

Since I had all the ingredients to hand (apart from the rosemary which I “borrowed” from a complete strangers garden) I started it as soon as I got home, and yes, the kitchen smelt wonderful but not of orange blossom – If I’d read all the recipe up front I would have realise the orange blossom is  added to a sugar syrup which is poured over the cake 30 minutes after removing it from the oven.

The cake was very fresh and rich and buttery, reminiscent of a Nigella Lawson recipe I once made where half the usual ingredients are replaced by marzipan, not surprising really since marzipan is largely almonds, so the principle is the same. The cake was very nice I’m told, but left me feeling disappointed, I guess I had built the anticipation of eating it in my mind a bit too much…making it cheered me up though.

No photo, I have not, up to now at any rate been in the habit of photographing my cakes…