Red Velvet Cake

As promised, here is the post with recipe for the Red Velvet cake I made for Littletree’s birthday.

Of course, being me, I refuse to use red food dye, so I figured I could do it with beetroot. Really longtime readers might remember that I used to make candy for Littletree from beetroots (and later blueberries) and unrefined sugar (recipe HERE), but I didn’t want to go for my usual ‘ah, I’ll just make it up as I go along and she’ll be right’ random recipe, so I asked the internet to find me someone with experience who’d done an all-natural red velvet cake with beetroot before.

My awesome friend Rose T came up with this brilliant recipe on Sophistimom blog, so that seemed like a good start.

It looked pretty simple, and was almost all ingredients I already had to hand, so off we went…

I roasted beetroots the night before and let them cool.

I blended said roasted beetroots in my trusty food processor with the 1/4 cup of lemon juice and a spoonful of vinegar. But my measurements aren’t too accurate, since we moved and I can’t find my measuring cups, so I’m just eyeballing it.

Then away with the food processer and out to a mixing bowl and my trusty, vintage SwiftWhip beater to cream a 250 gram block of butter (because I can’t get my head around American recipes that call for a “stick” of butter), and a whole tub of cream cheese. Again, I don’t know ounces, so I just put in the whole tub. I think it was 200g. The little bit less cream cheese cancels out the little bit extra butter. At least, it does in my book.

Also, creaming cream cheese and butter is hard work with an old-fashioned hand beater. But worth it. Once it was sort of soft enough, got into creaming in 2 1/3 cups sugar. Again with the using a juice cup and kind of guessing, but it turned out that I used the precise amount of sugar that was left in the jar. Then I cried because there was no sugar left for my coffee.

Once the sugar is creamed in, slowly add in four eggs. This is to make the batter easier to beat, and we nurse our blisters and wonder why we struggled through the creaming of butter and sugar. Also add in a sploosh of vanilla extract (I make my own, soaking organic vanilla beans in alcohol).

Then comes the silly part: where you need to use a second mixing bowl. I usually cheat on this bit and just bodge it all into the one bowl, because I loathe and detest washing up. But I have an indentured person now to do the dishes, and it was to be a special cake for Littletree’s birthday.

So I sifted 2 cups unbleached flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder (there was some debate on the internet as to how much cocoa to use, so I made something up), and 1 1/2 teaspoons himalayan salt into a mixing bowl, and slowly added it in to the wet batter. Then I stirred in the beetroot puree, and we were good to go!

Nice and red!

Grease and line three 8” cake pans… um, I don’t know how big 8” is, and I only have two round springform pans of indeterminate size, so I greased and lined those and called it good. Now, given that the recipe was for a three layer cake, and I only had two pans, I just kind of guessed at dividing the batter into thirds, put the first two in the oven, and then did the third one in a re-used pan.

Turned out on a rack to cool while I whipped up cream cheese frosting (two tubs of cream cheese, all the icing sugar I had (which turned out to be somewhat less than the recommended four cups), another whole packet of raw, organic, local butter (yay! I found a dairy just up the road selling unprocessed butter and cream!), 3 dollops of cream and a splash each of vanilla and almond extracts. Blend well.

The fun part was schmearing frosting between all the layers and covering the cake… you know, because I had to keep testing to make sure the frosting tasted good.

Once I’d done the cake, I suddenly remembered that Littletree had requested chocolate-dipped strawberries to go on top, but I’d totally forgotten. Standard fall-back plan: grate some chocolate on top of the frosting, and call it art.

The cake was a huge success of epic proportions; it looked awesome – sufficiently red; tasted great – rich and tangy; and the kids gobbled it up!

So much nom!

Fresh bread, hot out of the oven

Because here in the forest, that's how we roll.

Served with lashings of butter

Recipe
This bread is THE easiest bread you will ever make, because you don't have to knead it. It takes about 15 minutes of preparation time, just rises very slowly - rises twice for 6-8 hours each time. So yes, you need to plan ahead a bit, but ultimately, it’s almost no work at all, no kneading, but it takes a while. Worth it though!

Mix together thoroughly
- 1 & 3/4 cups warm water
- 1 scant tablespoon salt (good celtic or himalayan salt)
- 1/4 tsp instant yeast (yes, that's all)
- 1 cup all purpose flour - unbleached, organic white flour
- 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
(for the flour I've experimented with using spelt, rye, etc... some work better than others but they all seem to work, try what you like.)

Cover loosely & let sit 6 - 8 hours. Mixture should
be risen and possibly bubbly. It may have risen & fallen and be
sitting on top of a bed of liquid. This is called a "poolish". If you wish & you're able to, you can go on to the next step as soon as the poolish becomes bubbly, but it's all right to let it work till it gets to the "sitting on liquid" stage.

Add & mix well with spatula:
- 2 cups flour (For the basic recipe, I use half whole wheat & half unbleached white flour; you can experiment as you wish)
At this point you can add any ingredients you'd like:
herbs, seeds, nuts, olives, cheese, sun dried tomatoes, dried fruit and spices, chocolate chips, etc - be creative

Cover & let work till risen (6-8 hours or over night). At this point
the dough should be doubled in size and you should be able to see
large bubbles just below the surface.

You can bake the bread now, or delay baking by doing the following:
Sprinkle top & edges with 2 TBS flour & fold sides in to centre all the around the bowl. Fold the dough over a few times. Set aside for another 3 hours or so.
(If you don't have time to bake the bread at this point, you can
repeat this step. The flavour will develop further if you do, but
will still be good if you don't. I usually don't)

baking:
pre-heat oven to 260C. Bake the dough in a covered pot/ tin for 30 minutes. Then uncovered for 8-10 minutes at 230C. I usually line the tin with baking paper; works really well, and just cover with aluminium foil. 
(note that times may vary depending on the size of the bread - I often use this recipe to make rolls, but this time is about right for a "standard" loaf.

This is traditional baking at its best - the minimal yeast and slow rise time make for a better bread, without the need for chemical bread improvers or loads of yeast. super super easy, and super super yummy.

Epic Christmas Baking

Getting ready for our epic Christmas feast, Littletree and I spent the day baking. See – I knew it would be a bad idea to introduce her to baking; now she’s hooked. And the worst part is she can read the recipes herself now. Oh, what have I done!?

First things first – making gingerbread dough… because that is the first step in the creation of a gingerbread house.

The dough turned out nicely, and left to sit in the fridge for a few hours.

Meanwhile… we made tiramisu

I love tiramisu, but it’s quite a process to make it all from scratch – lots of different mixing bowls and layers to prepare, but it’s always worth it.

Once that was in the fridge to set, we got out the gingerbread dough and started rolling it out. We discovered a great tip – roll the dough between sheets of baking paper.

I found a nice stencil online for the house shapes, but it was so ridiculously not to scale… that turned into a nice geometry lesson; Littletree had to get out a ruler and calculate the measurements and angles.

Then we discovered that the best way to cut the shapes and transfer them onto the baking tray was to actually leave the dough sandwiched between the sheets of baking paper and cut it out with scissors. Works a treat, and easy to put right onto the baking tray as-is!

After the shapes were baked and cooled, we had the epic mission of making up royal icing (epic because in the humidity, my icing sugar had solidified into a solid rock and I had to grind it by hand with a mortar and pestle back into powder form.

And then came the assembly!

After a quick lesson on how to properly handle an icing bag and nozzle, I stepped aside and let Littetree have at it.

Despite a few sticky accidents learning experiences, she got the hang of it, and the gingerbread house was made beautifully, complete with a cat on the roof.

For some reason, I never took a photo of the finished product… but none of it would have been possible if not for AquaCat coming round to do all the dishes

All set for an epic feast!

Tiramisu Divine

Littletree and I decided to make a surprise for Aquacat’s 44 1/4 birthday – Tiramisu with fresh organic whipped raw cream and my home made coffee and orange liqueurs.

First squeeze 1/2 cup of orange juice... well, squeeze all the oranges, and take out 1/2 cup for the tiramisu, and serve the rest to Aquacat while she’s having a lie-in.

 

Then brew 2 cups of strong coffee and mix with the OJ, set aside to cool.

Slightly whip 300ml cream (well, slightly less than 300ml cream, because the container wasn't completely full).

Separate 3 eggs, beat the yolks together with 1/3 cup caster sugar till it's pale and thick, then whip in the cream and 250g Mascarpone cheese. (Yes, I use an original 1967 SwiftWhip hand beater for this, because I'm just that cool)

Whisk the egg whites till they are forming soft peaks, and then gently fold into the cream mixture.

Now take out the coffee and OJ - pour in a healthy shot of coffee liqueur and orange liqueur (about 1/4 cup of each). Quality control is important here, make sure the liqueurs are good all the way to the bottom of the bottle (adult supervision is vital for this step; kidlets aren’t allowed).

Then soak in Savoiardi sponge biscuits - let them soak up loads of the liquid and then line the base of a serving bowl or deep tray with them.

Then you layer - a layer of soaked savoiardi; a layer of cream mixture. rinse repeat. Well, don't actually rinse. You should get three layers, finishing off with cream mixture.

I grate chocolate slivers onto the top, but you could top with anything - a dusting of cocoa, chocolate-coated coffee beans... or just dunk your face right into it.

Cover and leave to set in the fridge for a couple of hours, and then...

NOM!

Aquacat was ecstatic

And the taste… mmmmmmmmmm

Spring Roll-out

Since we just celebrated the Vernal Equinox, and have unrelatedly been learning about culture along the Mekong River, Littletree and I decided to make fresh Spring Rolls.

Starting with making some fillings – we took fresh veggies, chopped finely with some pre-cooked rice noodles.

Then Littletree had the task of spooning little portions of the filling into rice paper pastry sheets and rolling them up

Eventually we had a feast’s worth – don’t they look pretty!

Then into the wok

Littletree handled the frying admirably

And the end result – a huge stack of awesome

Mmmmm they smelled so delicious

But the final test was in the tasting, and Littletree is a very fussy food critic. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a comment from her, as she didn’t pause in stuffing her face with the spring rolls for long enough to get a word in.

Later, she did wax lyrical about how amazing they are, and begged me to promise we’ll make more soon. Yum!

Happy Spring!

Cheesecake

Purple stumbled across an interesting recipe for Dulce de Leche Cheesecake Bars and we thought we’d give it a whirl…

Only, _Graham crackers_ aren’t something commonly gotten in Australia, and even managing with the best available substitutes, “a packet” is not a standard unit of measurement, even in the US, as far as I could determine from googling.

So, using the recipe as inspiration, we made something completely different.

Dulce de Leche is also something not so easy to come by, and it’s an expensive specialty item… lucky for me, I know you can take ye olde tin of homebrand sweetened condensed milk, and simmer it (the whole, unopened tin) in a pot of water for about 2 hours – make sure to keep topping up the water so it doesn’t boil dry, et voila! Dulce de Leche!

So start with a few digestive biscuits of some variety. Chocolate Tiny Teddy biscuits work, and I imagine Tim Tams would would really well. Crush up enough biscuits to make about a cup of biscuit crumbs, blend in a couple spoons of sugar and enough softened butter to make it kind of hold together, in a crumbly sort of way. Press this into a 20cm square pan and bake in the oven 160C for 10 mins. Take it out of the oven to cool.

Meanwhile, blend a couple of tubs of cream cheese in the food processer, then add in half a cup of sugar and a couple of free-range eggs. Lick the spoon liberally. Then we added in a small splash of vanilla extract and – the secret weapon ingredient; home made coffee liqueur.

Spread the Dulce de Leche onto the cooled biscuit base, and then pour the cheesecake filling on to that. spread it carefully, and pop it back into the oven for 50 minutes. Then you have to wait for it to cool, but you can occupy yourself with licking the bowl and making sure the home-made coffee liqueur hasn’t gone bad.

For the final topping, make ganache – heat cream till boiling, then pour into a bowl with an equal weight of broken up chocolate, whisk till the chocolate is fully melted in and creamy. Spread a thin layer of this on top of the cheesecake and refrigerate for a while (how long it takes to watch an episode of Firefly and finish off the coffee liqueur should be enough).

Ready to cut and serve!!! OMG soooooooo good

First Candle

Guess what today is?

That’s right! I’m making sufganiot – jam-filled doughnuts. Which means it’s Channukah!

Home-made organic doughnuts from scratch:

Step 1: create a universe in which the following ingredients are available: Wheat flour, yeast, salt, sugar, cinnamon, milk, water, jam, oil.

Step 2: make up a basic yeast dough with a little milk and sugar, lets say, 4 cups flour, 2/3 cup sugar, a packet instant yeast, pinch salt, teaspoon cinnamon. mix it up and slowly pour in about a cup of warm milk and water (half-half). Keep adding in the milky water till you have a dough you can knead. Might need a tad more than a cup.

Step 3: knead the dough. (Baker’s secret: Make sure you taste some. Eating dough is vital to the process). Then cover it in a bowl and leave to rise for an hour or two (longer for colder temperatures).

Step 4: tear off and roll up small balls of the dough, flatten them into rounds, make a depression in the middle (almost as if you’re starting to make a bowl). Plop in a spoonful of jam – careful to get jam only in the centre of the dough bowl – and top it with another round of dough. Press the edges together carefully to make a nice seal (so jam wont leak out when cooking), roll the whole thing a little into a nice shape, and leave to rise more. Repeat till you run out of dough.

Step 5: Heat oil in a pot and deep fry the doughnuts till golden outside and cooked all the way through. Baker’s tip: don’t have a tantrum and throw boiling oil all over yourself.

Option: instead of a dollop of jam, put a square of chocolate in the middle.

Enjoy!

Altered Reality

Lady Demelza, being the artistic goddess that she is, makes Altered Books. Her current main project is an awesome 1960s Margaret Fulton cookbook that she’s transforming into a thing of beauty.

Some pages get removed, some get improved, new things are added in.

It’s really quite inspiring art, and being created by Lady Demelza, quite impressive

So impressive, in fact, that Littletree started working on a few pages with her

Littletree got so involved in it, the ever-gorgeous Lady Demelza decided to indulge in her passion for Op-Shopping and take Litteltree in search of her own vintage cookbook to alter. Didn’t take them long to find a Gretta Anna cookbook, circa 1987.

The two of them have been avidly working at their respective books, Littletree is quite enthused with her newest project!

I’ll post updates for sure!