Muffin Mysteries

About nine years ago, I got an email from an old school friend. It only said one thing, which was something like:
"How do you make muffins do the spilling-over-the-top thing?"

I still don't know. Any cupcakes I make are flat at the top. I did once get the desired effect when I used bicarbonate of soda instead of baking powder. They looked fantastic but tasted disgusting. I've just looked on the internet and one suggestion is to use more baking powder. I might try that next time.

My next question is: how do you keep chocolate chips on the top from burning? And how do you help chocolate chunks which are slightly cuboid keep their shape?

Today I made some chocolate fairy cakes which had chocolate chips and a bit of a gooey toffee centre. I was inspired by a muffin I bought in a theatre cafe on Thursday evening. It was chocolate batter with chocolate chips and had little squidges of toffee inside. It was lovely.

I did buy milk chocolate to break into bits and pop into the cake mix, but then I was struck with an idea which would use up some leftovers, thus creating more space in the fridge.
I had some chocolate sauce in the fridge which had been made for the ice-cream cake I made recently. The cake had long since gone, and I was left with the chocolate sauce made of chocolate and double cream which, as you might expect, had the hardness of truffles. I chopped it up into little chunks and shoved bits into the cake mix. I half-filled the cake cases, then dribbled in some toffee sauce which I had also made to accompany the long-gone ice-cream cake. I made sure the toffee got covered with cake mix.

I got a pretty good result. The toffee sauce didn't go hard (good). The exposed bits of chocolate chunk did not burn (good) but spread a little and did not keep their shape (disappointing).

They taste very nice, by the way, but I would still like your hints for spilling-over-the-top chunky choc chip muffin success.

Chutney

I made some out of dried apricots. It's all too easy to make, and it's instant pizazz for your cheese sandwich or a Christmas present.

1) Soak some dried apricots, and maybe one sundried tomato for every twenty apricots in water for 24 hours
2) Drain excess liquid and chop the fruit into small chunks
3) Add cider vinegar, a little salt and pepper, powdered mace, powdered cinnamon, powdered clove and powdered allspice (pimento). If you added too much vinegar or salt, you might want to redress this with some sugar.
4) Bottle it in a sterilised jar. I used a small stainless steel tin with a lid, as one can often find in South Asian households as a more robust alternative to Tupperware. I have kept it in the fridge.

I would experiment with other dried fruit which is knocking about in your cupboard not doing anything.

Food in the movies

Inspired by the insignificant quotation from Cry Baby in last night's entry, I would like to compile a list of quotations from films about food. I'm not sure how far I'll get, but suggestions would be very welcome.

Sup(p)er.

I think you should know the score by now, if you see an entry about supper here, it's not likely to have photographs because hungry stomach and greedy mouth work faster than camera finger.

I made a shoddy Potato Gratin ("We're having your favorite, Wanda honey, Potatoes au Gratin!" "Mmmmmm!") to use up a splash of cream I had. At least, I sliced potatoes thinly, added some marrow slices, oil, salt, pepper rosemary, cream, slices of garlic between layers, sprinkles some dry uncooked polenta grain on it because I couldn't be bothered looking for the semolina. Covered casserole dish in tin foil, whacked the heat up to Gas Mark 9 for an hour. Left the foil off for the last ten minutes and added oak-smoked Lancashire to bubble on the top.

I also made a mash out of some unknown squash. It was mottled green and cream on the outside and I feared it would taste watery and boring but it was a bit like butternut squash. I roasted it with olive oil, paprika and cumin before blitzing with a bit of fresh ginger root.

Finally, a pea and mint puree, as I was still feeling inspired by the meal I was taken out for and the end of last month. Frozen peas, fresh finely chopped mint leaves, an onion I'd roasted in its skin while the oven was on, it all got the blitz treatment. Pepper, a squeeze of lime but no salt, which is strange for a sodium chloride fiend like me.

And that's what you can end up eating if you're not a house of flesh-eaters. I'm kind of glad I didn't take any photos because the presentation of the food was really poor. I rather fancied dribbling the puree artfully onto mine and my dining mates' plates, but in the end reality overpowered and my small aesthetic self was out for the count.

Cake-o-rama / a tardy rice dream

I have recently made two of these thingummies. Here is a fine coconut cake:



The cake itself was a very basic cake sponge with added desiccated coconut. What really makes it is the frosting, an indulgent mix of cream cheese, icing sugar, more desiccated coconut, a wee bit of fat and do you know what the magic ingredient is? The real kick? It's a dash of zingy lemon juice which cuts through the sweet fat rather nicely.

This is very late, but here are my pretty spring rolls from my rice paper / homemade seitan phase. Which may return. I don't know yet. The colour you see in the rolls is provided by nasturtium flowers and leaves, of which there was a sizeable glut last month.



The second cake, in case you were wondering, is lying dormant in a dark very cool place, waiting to be decorated. Picture soon.

And here it is:



I saw it once on a Nigella Lawson cookery programme, got very excited by the idea and thought that would be a good dessert for a special occasion. One makes it by mixing crushed biscuit, crushed cinder toffee, honey roast peanuts and chocolate / peanut butter chips with ice cream and freezing it in a spring form cake tin lined with clingfilm. You take it out, serve with warm chocolate sauce, and warm butterscotch sauce and what do you know? It's not unlike eating an ice-cream Snickers. I can't believe I made this for someone's birthday. The only thing I am proud of is that I honey roasted my own peanuts and made my own chocolate / peanut swirled chips because I couldn't find any.

I could probably make a much better ice cream cake, less chaotic, more structured and meaningful. You watch this space.

Snazzy Restaurant Afternoon

My sister took me to the Michael Caines restaurant (not Caine) in Manchester this afternoon. We had six dishes from the grazing menu, small portions of stuff.

I tried rabbit, wood pigeon, lobster, scallops and caviar for the first time. The rabbit tasted like intensely chickeny chicken; the lobster was kind of chunky prawny; the caviar garnish was minutely dotted on the lobster dish so I could hardly taste it; the scallops were delightfully fishy. I had a peach tart with creme fraiche sorbet and bitter lemonade for dessert. There was a coconut / pea palate cleanser in a shot glass. The dishes were beautifully garnished with things like buttery sauces, intensely flavourful mushrooms, pea puree, garlic puree, sundried tomato vinaigrette, broad bean halves, bitter lemon mousse, a cube of vanilla custard, potato croquettes and pea tendrils. I had a glass of Chardonnay in a proper Chardonnay glass. There were two other dishes; a salad of slivers of aubergine, courgette flower and artichoke with parmesan shavings and lamb. I do feel like I have had enough meat to last me the rest of the year, though.

This whimsical food and the afternoon at the restaurant seems ever so slightly wasted on me but I value the experience as this is the first I have had. It feels like a dream in a way; I'm not completely sure that it happened. I have written this to remember it and hopefully get some ideas. I pay so little attention to presentation of food and I should because it is not difficult to do. I'm not sure about eating at such a place again, although if the opportunity comes up I will probably take it.

The Seitanic Verses

If I can turn this into a sonnet or even rhyming couplets, I will. But for now:

There are, as far as I know, two ways of making seitan. One is a knead and rinse method, one is straight to simmer. (These are not official technical terms for seitan-making like "The Creaming Method" is for cakes). I used knead and rinse. The latter seems to be if you have wheat gluten at your disposal, which I do not (Aside: I wonder what else wheat gluten can be used for apart from making seitan? Perhaps you just stir it into your milkshakes if you are trying to beef up.)

So, here are my tips and observations.

- One recipe I found used wholemeal flour. Either sift out the bran before you make the flour into dough, or just use white flour; it's a lot easier. I can't believe I didn't have the common sense to realise that before the deed was done, but there you go.
- Strong flour (the stuff used for breadmaking) is the best type of flour. I also experimented with plain flour. The dough made from this is prone to falling apart when you soak it in water to rinse it out, but this isn't necessarily a big problem: all you need to do is put the disintegrated mess into a sieve, rinse off starch which has come off in the water and swirl the gluten mix round in the net. It will soon stick together.
- You will make a mess of your sink and work surfaces. It seems to be law. I clogged up my sink with starch. So, does anyone have any good uses for wheat starch? I don't have any shirt collars which particularly need stiffening.
- As many knead and rinse recipes will tell you, the final step is to simmer the seitan in your flavouring broth of choice. I used 2 lapsang souchong teabags; a marinade which I made from some leftover toffee dissolved down and made into marinade, boullion powder, and soy sauce.
- I have been left with a brown shiny lump of which looks rather disgusting. But hey; meat is a a red shiny lump which can look rather disgusting. Wow, I could dye the seitan in beetroot and carrot juice- would it look more like meat then?

I have eaten plenty of wheat gluten fake meat, and what is greatly lacks compared to animal is the flavour which the animal fat brings to it. I suppose if you don't really like the taste of meat, but just like its texture, then it's not a problem. However, I do like meat, and I'm curious as to how to recreate that taste without killing an animal. I'm not sure how to address this, apart from cooking it in (lots of) (well-flavoured) fat. How it will taste I will just have to see. I'll keep you posted.