Songs, skirts and scones

Yes, I did bake in the last month, you’ll be surprised to know. Although sewing took up most of my spare time, to diverse the mind I did do some baking at the weekends.

The first baking, Swedish cinnamon rolls, was initiated by Hendrikje when we went for a walk along the Callan river. ‘Mummy, when are you going to make those buns with that sticky, salty [yes, salty] white stuff on them?’ Hein? Oh, cinnamon rolls with lemon icing! A while back we had a small picnic with those buns when we walked along the rivers and that seemed to have stuck (in more than one way, haha).

The second round consisted of a baked cheesecake. The plan was to make a mocca cheesecake, for which everybody was really enthusiastic, even the girls. That is, until I actually made the instant coffee mix. “COFFEE?! Yugh!! We don’t want coffee, we want berries!!” O, okay… Luckily there were some mixed fruit leftover stuck at the back of the freezer…

The third round of baking was for a visit from friends for tea: sweet scones, and a lot of them. Butter, jam and plain, anything and everything went!

Now on our holiday I made a non bake cheesecake, inspired by Kathrijn’s imaginative food shop play: ‘here you are mummy, strawberry cake with cola sauce’. O thanks dear…. Mmmm, maybe it is not so bad: cola cake, cola cheesecake? Let’s google that. Yeah, sure, cola cheesecake exists, but I found baked only. So I made my simple non bake cheesecake and mixed in ± 175 ml cola. The flavour was very subtle, but I suppose you don’t really want any cake to taste obviously like a glass of coke! At least we didn’t have to burp after it!

Last weekend was rather an orange weekend: football, politics, food and drink all had the bright shine of a sunset. Across the waters in our homeland the people were going crazy because of the Dutch national football team had reached the final of the world cup and anticipated a big win. Normally we couldn’t care less about football, but the wins of the national team convinced us to watch the last three matches. Orange is the colour of our Royal house and mostly used national teams in all sports.

Here in Armagh and all over Northern Ireland people were preparing for the 12th of July celebrations which are by definition also an orange affair. In big parades Orangemen celebrate the win of the Protestant King William over the Catholic ruler at the battle of the Boyne. This is something we definitely would not associate with, if only because the parades keep our children up all evenings!
Then the food. With Lucy from Attic 24’s lemonade recipe being a big hit, we thought that that procedure could be used for all sorts of fruits, especially oranges. Five oranges peeled and squeezed, mixed with sugar and water give a lot more sirup however than five lemons and my precious soup terrine nearly overflowed!

After 24 hours of patiently waiting, a nice glass of homemade orange squash with bubbly water taste sooo good! Tjabering loved sucking out the orangeskins, funny little man!

Along side in the meantime, I had an evil plan (evil for any weight loss ideas we might have had): after a few weekends of very little baking, I wanted to make a proper cake. One that would make people beg for more, even though the are ’shtuffed’. Obviously the orange theme had to be maintained and there was just the recipe waiting for me in Leiths Baking Bible: orange and poppy seed cake. Although I am usually hesitant in baking/making poppy seed food with a toddler running about (anyone who has ever changed a dirty nappy after a poppy seed roll lunch can only sympathise, I’m sure), but as Young Master nowadays does really well in toilet training himself, I took the chance!

The cake itself is baked with only some orange rind. The big sunburst orange flavour is added after the cake is baked and cooled. Orange juice and sugar is boiled to a syrup, which is poured over the cake after you have put a skewer in about 40 times. Swirl swirl until most syrup has run into the holes and leave to stand until all syrup has disappeared. Wait, not yet, let is sit for a few hours, so the syrup has had the chance to seep right to the bottom of the cake. Then cut, eat and say, like Young Master: mm-mm, lekker (yummy)! And no, he didn’t walk into a wall, those are the remains of a green tiger face painting!

Some orange weekend we had!

For the lunch with our friends I wanted to make something the girls choose. The last couple of weeks the girls are weirdly and unexplainable interested in the cupcake and cheesecake cookbook I bought a while back. The only cheesecake I made from it was nice, the first slice, but gosh, the rest was ate with some reluctance. Most recipes ask for 750 grams to 1 kilo (!!!!) of cream cheese, which gives me hardburn just reading it. Anyway, the girls had picked a ’sprickled cupcakes’ recipe (i.e. picture), and as I promised I would make whatever they picked, I followed the recipe to the letter.

Remember how I always complain about the consistency of the batter. This recipe gave the most gorgeous, velvety batter I have made so far!!! O, skip sip, hop hop, this is going to taste sooo good!!

Half an hour later I am chewing some stodgy cupcake that is perfectly cooked, but still tasted as if had just gone in the oven, yugh! The girls went on the decorate them with icing and sprinkles and thought that they were yummy…. Weird children!

I am sure I will now only use that cookbook for flavour inspiration and leave the recipes well unread.

… strawberry, rhubarb, strawberry and rhubarb, rhubarb and strawberry!

Last Thursday was one of those days when I thought: ‘why did I think it was a good idea to work full time over four days?’ By the time I dragged myself home again I had had quite enough. So to my great and pleasant surprise I found an old friend in the kitchen who was on a trip from Canada. Paul did mention to me briefly that pipes maker Joe Kennedy was in the country again and that he wanted to visit, but it had completely slipped my mind. Of course there was lots of talk, food and beer (for the men) and a casual mention of home made baking. Joe mentioned his mum’s rhubarb and strawberry pie and how he hadn’t had a cake like that in a long time. Ha, that was my cue for to do some particular shopping.

So, on Friday, while everybody was at school and visiting other friends, Tjabering and I set to making squashy rhubarb cake, but now with strawberries added. Tjabering was insistent on helping me at every step of the way, and without sisterly distractions that worked surprisingly well. After greasing, mixing, adding, tasting, it was time to put the cake in the oven and patiently wait and wait. Then, after taking the cake out, we had to wait again for it to cool down  and then again for everybody to come home. After a light dusting of icing sugar, we set down for a nice cuppa and cake… A good day, not the least thanks to my little helper!

On the first of June 2005 about an hour after waking up, a cheerful lady brought me a tray of breakfast in the hospital room were I had spend the night, awaiting my elective section. As I had so hoped to have had my baby that day, I was so disappointed when she answered my question ‘I thought I wasn’t allowed breakfast if I’m to have a section today?’ with ‘Section, what section, as far as I know you are not booked in for a section!’ After a long (and hungry!) wait the consultant came to see us and made it very clear: the notes on the file said both ‘trial of labour’ or ‘elective section’, but you can’t have both, so we had to choose there and then. As obviously we had prepared ourselves for the section anyway, the choice wasn’t that difficult. About 5 hours later our Kathrijn was born, a big lump of a baby. That big lump of a baby is now a beautiful 5 year old girl, sweet, quiet, but very social. I can’t believe she is now also no longer a little girl…

For her birthday treat at school the birthday girl had very clear ideas: chocolate cake with smarties! Never scared of a challenge I opted to try out a new recipe: Rachel Allen’s chocolate cake from Bake. Not that dissimilar to any other but still worth a try.

The recipe calls for two cakes from sandwich tins sandwiched together with icing. But, as the cake is going to be handed out to 24 children and 2 teachers, I opt for filling one tray, using the icing as a topping. My cakebaking wouldn’t be complete without curdled mixture, so yes, this time around it curdled again. IT DRIVES ME INSANE!!! No matter what I do: cream long or short, use warmer ingredients, add egg by teaspoon full or ladle-full, mix long or short, it always curdles. Now, it shouldn’t really matter to me, because the cake tastes nothing less, it just feel like a ton of bricks!

So, after some meditative breathing I called the girls to decorate the cake. I wouldn’t say that there ended up more decoration in tummies than on the cake, but there was surely a great attraction towards the icing and the smarties. The chocolate icing recipe that Rachel Allen gives is just the best! It gives you a nice chocolaty, but not too dark a flavour, and light texture. All with just butter, vanilla extract and a tablespoon of cream mixed until soft and then add icing sugar and cocoapowder until smooth smooth smooth…

The cake was definitely the start attraction when Kathrijn came to school and they all wanted to pick the smarties before school had even started!

For Kathrijn’s birthday party on Saturday, I made the same cake, but this time in the start tin, and doesn’t it look pretty? I made it the day before (curdle curdle) and didn’t put the icing and smarties on until on the morning of the party, because the weather was quite warm. The shouts weren’t from the air: ‘chocolate cake!’, ‘it is the same as in school! ‘ It was really nice: heavy, but full of sweet chocolate flavour, just right for 5 year olds (and adults)!

Oh, and it does taste nice with some vanilla ice cream as well, after the children have gone to bed !

Last Saturday necessity was again the  mother of ‘invention’: I wanted to go to IKEA, Paul really needed a day (or even half a day) on his own to work on a media presentation with the deadline on Monday and the children deserved a wee trip. Thus at half eight everyone, except Paul, sat strapped in the car and we headed of to Belfast to visit our ‘take-away-Swede’. I let out a sigh when just before Portadown Hendrikje started asking: are we there yet?…

Luckily, after some explaining, they seemed to grasp it would be a longish drive, but that at the end there would a reward: IKEA’s småland will take all little children over 3 years old from weary parents . After leaving two bouncy girls in the care of småland, Tjabering (who was not one bit happy he wasn’t allowed to go) and myself went of on a 45-minutes shopping spree. After 45 minutes your småland pager will go off and will near enough not stop beeping until you are back to collect your children!

Anyhow, with a small list of have-to-get items, I ended up with only half of it: two items were discontinued since we bought last time. I did get some nice postcards for my postcrossing AND (yes we are finally getting to some relevance here) a lovely star shaped cake tin! I had seen it several times before, as did I see all the other lovely tins they sell, but only this time I thought, what the heck, let’s just buy it from the money I can’t spend on the things we need!

On our way back home we passed one of those road side stalls selling potatoes, strawberries and the like. In a split second I had to decide, will I or will I not? Of course there was no not stopping after I had mentioned ‘oh strawberries’. Although they were expensive, I took some home and enjoyed the fruitful (haha) results of our trip.

At home the hunt for a suitable strawberry cake recipe proved ridiculously difficult! The mind was set on a cake with the strawberries in it, not on it, and without creme. Eventually I had to resort to the successful squashy rhubarb recipe and simply replaced the rhubarb with strawberries. All the children were around to lend a hand: Hendrikje and Kathrijn cleaned, crowned and cut the strawberries. Hendrikje spread them over the dough while Kathrijn (and the weekend’s laundry, ahum) patiently waited.

Tjabering was on hand to spread the crumble on top of the strawberries.

The smell of this cake was divine!! You can imagine the disappointment when, after some cooling down, the cake proved too squashy to come out of the tin in one piece…

It did make serving it all the easier (and quicker): after one tea break the cake was clean gone!

Needless to say, when I asked Kathrijn what cake she would want to eat for her birthday when she got home from school, it was this one! Not one for squashing the cake in both goes, I made the birthday cake in a regular tin and this came out fine and just as delicious!

It was well worth coming home early from work that day to eat birthday cake together!

What a wonderful few days we have had last week. It seemed summer had finally arrived! We had a nice weekend ahead of us: Armagh Pipers Club toddler garden party in the afternoon, APC singing session in the Public Library in the evening and on Sunday I was going swimming with the girls.

Paul took the girls to the party, while I was quite content to stay behind and bake some oat cookies for the evening session. I could have gone for a lavish cake, but we are quite particular about food consumption in the library, so I opted for one-bite-no-crumbs (hopefully) cookies. I made the cookies from Attic24’s Lucy recipe again, this time adding some sunflower seeds and raisins. They were lovely and soft (not that I tasted them before the session, no way, ehum) and I hid them as soon as they were cool.

Well prepared and relaxed I walked up with the cookies in the evening, only to realise I had forgotten the keys to the library. Run-run back, get car key so I could drive back quickly, nearly again forgetting the library keys…. Luckily I was still on time and could set up, leaving the cookies in the kitchen.

Yes, you are guessing right, after the organisers came in, so much food was put in the kitchen, the cookies had disappeared, only to re-appear áfter clearing up… Ach well, I’m sure there are some people at home who wouldn’t mind eating two trays of cookies!

Last Saturday was a lovely glorious day. Fairly early I got the children ready to go on a trip to Loughgall for the annual Bramley Apple fair. Leaving Paul to recover from his sickness in his bed, we drove of with blue skies and sunshine. From the Loughgall Country Park, a mini buss took us up to the Manor Estate, if this would have been the only thing we did on this trip, it would have made it worthwhile! The children were so excited: the bus took a slight detour through the park and estate leaving us to marvel at beautiful views. At the Manor wonderfully presented stalls covered a large area of the gardens: baked goods, jams, fruit, veg, local meat, cheese, ethnic food, plants, sweets, cards, games, petting farm, and of course, the most important feature of all: the bouncy castle!

We had a lovely time playing, eating and shopping: we arrived home with rhubarb, freshly pressed apple juice, goat’s cheese, naan bread spice mixture, mashmallows. I had been very good and did not buy any plants or cakes! When we arrived home, we were glad to see Paul up and about (a little), telling us that an old friend from the Netherlands and fellow piper Swier would be visiting us on Sunday. He was on a business trip around Ireland and had a day left to spent before travelling home. His business trip was not your average trip: spending a week on a  ship to do biological maritime research!

Of course a cake had to be made for this occassion, we haven’t seen him for a year or two! That big bundle of rhubarb I bought at the fair came in quite handy. The squashy rhubarb cake from Leith’s Baking Bible is moist, sweet and tangy and, well, squashy.

Sunday morning I set to baking the simple recipe of dough at the bottom, sugared rhubarb scattered on the dough, and a crumble to top it of. A little dusting of icing sugar on the top after it has cooled down makes it just that little bit more festive. I find these squashy cakes are usually better tasting once they have cooled down anyway!

When Swier arrived, we sat outside in the sunshine, drank coffee, had cake and generally talked the time away. The cake went down really well, apart from the girls, who moved their plates to us, ach, the burden.  But, we were very good and did not finish the cake ourselves: on Monday I took the leftover pieces to work for two colleagues who had helped me out earlier in the week!

Friday was a funny old day: Thursday I spent at home, because Paul was quite sick and couldn’t take care of Tjabering. We both thought Friday would be better, so I could make up for Thursday, but alas. After I had worked from home for a bit I sort of walked around with ‘my soul under my arm’, as we would say, not knowing what to do next, nor feeling like doing anything.

When the girls had come home from school, the shopping had been done, it dawned on me: baking is what is needed! A quick fix! What quicker fix than muffins? Mmmm. In the freezer there were some sad looking forest fruits leftover from smoothie making, would it be enough for a set of muffins? Ay, indeed. With help from the girls dry ingredients were sift, wet ingredients mixed and generally a mess was made! After popping the tin in the oven, the girls were delegated upstairs, while I removed all the evidence from kitchen floor, work surface and back splash.

And after 25 minutes, aahh, quick fix or what? Sumptuous muffins with sweet berries and cherries. And oh, how disappointed I was to hear the girls didn’t like them. Now we had to eat them all by ourselves, such burden!

When we were enjoying our Indonesian meal with friends a while back, plans were already made for an early BBQ at their place the week after. Will we come? Well, twist our arms! Their garden has a conservatory, so if the weather was not going to be cooperative, we could always retire in warmth and dryness. On Monday morning I set about on a what-do-we-have-in-the-cupboard-that-would-combine-into-a-nice-desert-type-of-cake quest. Chocolate cake? Mmm, no. Banana bread? Mmm, no. Something with mango? Mmmm, yes. Perhaps some coconut? Yes! Flicking through my baking books I came across mango recipes which would involve trips to exotic supermarkets, which I had no inclination of doing, no matter how tempting banana, mango and passion-fruit cake sounded! At long last I found a simple fresh fruit cake recipe in Leiths baking Bible.

The recipe called for fresh fruit like apples, pears, plums, to be quartered and diced, and the batter to be spiced with cinnamon. The fruit was replaced by the mango and the cinnamon by dessicated coconut. The result was a nice coarse  cake (Euhm, what’t that, the batter ’s split? Nooooo, that’s how it suppose to look, ahum…) with juicy bits of mango. It was nearly all the children had to eat, they were to busy going on exploration!

We had a great afternoon in relative sunny surroundings (although we all had something coatish or sweaterish on us), good food, garden chat and amusement from the thee Eliasbergs, local circus!