Baking Like Mad

Golly gosh. Haven’t Fred and I been busy lately?

Here are some highlights of all the tasty things we created over the last month.

1. One of the latest bestsellers on the Bred by Fred stall: our Courgette Tea Cakes. These little sweeties are sandwiched with a blop of tangy lime curd, which seem to go down a treat with our customers.

2. My latest, greatest Favourite Breakfast Ever: a banana sourdough loaf. Nothing to do with new-found commercial baking necessities. Purely for my own breakfast pleasure. (Adapted from here.)

3. Possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever created in my life (although, during the process of its making, it did resemble something akin to a meat grave): my rabbit and ham hock terrine.

4. And finally, one to watch out for at the next Local to Ludlow on Thursday 24th September: our Apple, Fennel and Rapeseed Cake.

Local to Ludlow: Part II

Bred by Fred’s next appearance at the Local to Ludlow market will take place on Thursday 27th August.

One of our seasonal cakes of the month is going to be hazelnut.

My advice? Get there early, because this baby – she’s going to be a sell-out.

Bred by Fred

I am very excited to announce that Fred and I have gone public: we’ve started a catering business!

Currently, we’ve signed up to sell tasty wares at the Local to Ludlow market (which we’ll be attending on the 4th Thursday of the month only) and we’re looking into a couple of other farmer’s/local produce markets in the area too.

However, markets will only be the customer-facing side to Bred by Fred. We’re hoping to get our name out there (by me force-feeding customers business cards, as well as baked goodies), so that the private catering events will eventually become the main element of the business.

So, to last week’s market.

Fred was a sell out.

Oh yes. We sold:

- Sourdough loaves

- Soda bread loaves

- Cornish splits (the original and superior accompaniment to Cream Tea)

- Cocoa and hazelnut meringues

- Mini lemon meringue tartlets

- Mini rhubarb and ginger tartlets

- Chocolate and raspberry cake

- Small raspberry heart tarts

- Small fruit tarts

- Blackcurrant crème brûlées

- Mini onion and marjoram tartlets

- Mini beetroot leaf and Little Hereford (a local, unpasteurised cow’s milk cheese) tartlets

- Raspberry ‘Sweet Ladies’ Tongue’ biscuits

- Gooseberry and elderflower ‘Sweet Ladies’ Tongue’ biscuits

I’m now brimming with ideas for the next one, so I’ll see you there – stall (this time) overladen with treats. Be there or be, um… hungry.

Birthday Barbie

My brother turned 30 last week.  We decided that this was reason enough to get drunk and throw a few things on the barbeque.  (Although thankfully for him, not quite in that order.)

If you’re me, these few things can range from anything like roughly minced steak to soft, wobbly pigs’ ears, so as such, his birthday menu went like this:

Canapés (Served with elderflower fizz)

Chicory leaf boats filled with capers, sorrel and parsley, topped with crispy pigs’ ears.

Herbed goats cheese on homemade wholemeal bites.

Mains

Homemade chuck steak burgers, served with sweet cucumber pickle, mustard mayonnaise, good ol’ Heinz tommy k. and Alan’s green tomato chutney, on homemade burger buns.

Grilled feta and marjoram-stuffed vineleaves (pilfered from our vine in the greenhouse) with orange and mint salad.

Also on the Table:

Seasonal leaf and herb salad.

Sourdough loaves.

Dessert

Four-stack gooseberry and elderflower cake.  (With candles.)

Nettle and Primrose Cupcakes

It’s a bit like seasonal Groundhog Day when it comes to me in the kitchen.  I’m fairly sure that one day soon, a member of my family is going to ban me from leaving the house for fear that I’m going to come back with yet another carrier bag full of nettles.  (I think attempts have already been made to hide the gardening gloves.)

Today’s tongue tingler:  nettle cupcakes.

The basic method for these babies came from your cookbook-shelf-friend and mine, Nigella, and features in How to Be a Domestic Goddess.  Year after year I knock out batches of her lavender cupcakes, and I can pretty much guarantee that these are what you’d be served with a cuppa if you happened to accidently wander down our drive on a summer’s afternoon.

However, it’s not summer, and nettles are what I’ve got.  And fear not, I know that nettles work in a sweet capacity.  I can vouch that my nettle beer (which required an outrageous amount of sugar) was almost reminiscent of sparkling elderflower, and the nettle flavour in these cupcakes is very subtle – featuring mainly in the icing.

Method:

Use quantities as specified for cupcakes here, but only use two or three drops of vanilla essence.  You will also need a couple of handfuls of nettle tops too.

About half an hour before you want to bake these, pop about 250ml full fat milk into a pan and set it on the hob.  Just as it’s about to come to the boil, add the nettle tops and allow a few seconds for them to wilt down.  Remove the pan from the heat and press a circle of greaseproof paper onto the milk before placing a lid on top of the pan.  Leave the milk to infuse for 20 minutes, then remove the lid and greaseproof paper, strain the milk (squeezing out the nettles) and allow to cool a little.

Use the milk in the amounts specified for the cupcakes and for the icing, take 250g sieved icing sugar and whisk in nettle-infused milk (a little at a time) until you have a thick, but still slightly runny, icing.

Ice once the cakes have cooled and top each cake with a crystallised primrose (primula vulgaris).

Crystallised Primrose:

Primula (or primrose) flowers – 12, inspected and carefully washed

Egg whites – 1, just broken up slightly with a fork

Caster sugar – for coating

Using a small paintbrush, paint each flower individually with egg white, making quite sure that you get into all the nooks and crannies.  Sprinkle caster sugar all over the flowers, leaving an even coating and shaking off any excess.

Place the flowers on a tray lined with greaseproof paper and leave somewhere warm (above a radiator, or next to a woodburner, etc) overnight, until completely dry.  These should store well if kept in an airtight tin or jar.