Year: 2019

  • Tarte à la citrouille

    Tarte à la citrouille

    [Pumpkin pie]

    Originally published on October 9, 2009

    Tarte à la citrouille
    A strong favourite around our house, pumpkin pie often appears on our birthday table (yay for autumn birthdays!!).
    I make this one with muscovado sugar, which brings lovely caramel undertones, complements the earthy flavour of fresh pumpkin.

    The first step is to make pumpkin purée, by roasting the pumpkin, then blending it with a touch of butter. The roasting helps to get rid of the moisture naturally present in pumpkin flesh, and thus, creates a smooth (bubble free) pumpkin flan. But it also adds a depth of flavour with a bit of caramelising here and there.

    For this recipe, you’ll need a pâte sucrée tart case, which you can easily make in advance from the recipe here.
    I find that it’s best to blind-bake the tart case until golden.

    Tarte à la citrouille

    makes one 24-26cm wide tart
    For the pâte sucrée
    a 24-26 cm wide fond, baked blind

    For the pumpkin purée
    500 g pumpkin, peeled and diced
    1 tbsp butter

    For the pumpkin flan
    2 eggs
    70 g light muscovado sugar
    170 g double cream
    1/2 tbsp cinnamon
    a touch of grated nutmeg
    1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
    seeds from half a vanilla pod
    pinch of salt

    Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Place the diced pumpkin flesh into a baking pan and roast until tender, approximately half an hour. Blend in a mixer, adding the butter. Then allow to cool until it reaches room temperature.

    When the purée is cold, mix in the eggs, sugar, cream, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and vanilla seeds. Pour into the blind-baked tart case, then bake at 175˚C/fan 160˚C for 45 minutes, or until set.

    Allow to cool down completely before serving.

  • Sienna’s first birthday cake

    Sienna’s first birthday cake

    As a keepsake for myself. Vanilla génoise, raspberry and blueberry jam, vanilla crème pâtissière. Mascarpone cream, coloured with a syrup made with wild blueberries, sugar and water.

  • Fullkornsskorpor

    Fullkornsskorpor

    [Wholewheat rusks, a Swedish twice-baked bread]

    Skorpor are a traditional twice-baked bread from Sweden. And although I haven’t had time to do much research, I can only imagine that, like many other rusks, they originated from the need to either use old loaves or to conserve bread over an extended period of time.

    Often made with white flour and cardamom, you can now find many different kinds of skorpor on the shelves at the supermarket. I’ve even seen people make them out of leftover kanelbullar; which is something I might try but we rarely have uneaten bullar and when we do, they almost always end up as a French toast.

    Here in Sweden, skorpor are eaten as a mellanmål [afternoon tea], with butter and cheese, perhaps a spoonful of orange marmalade. Sometimes even dipped in warm rosehip soup.

    I must admit I’m partial to butter and marmalade. And the slight nuttiness of wholewheat flour. Perhaps it was the breakfasts made of Krisprolls and thé au lait [milk tea] that I fondly remember from my childhood.
    And yet, it took me almost thirty years to make skorpor in my kitchen. I think I started a couple of years ago. It was the end of blood orange season.
    That day, I took out the old Swedish baking books I had collected and went through every skorpa recipe I could find. I made blood orange marmalade too.

    I wrote weights down and calculated bakers’ percentages. I compared, and tasted, and made notes. And from them came the recipe that now sits in my notebook, the one I’m sharing with you today.
    I didn’t really consider doing so. But then, the other morning, a week or so ago, as I kneaded butter into the dough of my monthly batch, I thought that perhaps you’d like to make your own too.

    Notes

    – If graham flour isn’t available where you live, you can use 300 g wholewheat flour and 60 g wheatgerm.

    – All the recipes I’ve found use around 60 g of fresh yeast for each kilogram of flour; and while it may seem like a lot, it does reduce proofing times tremendously.
    You could get away with using half the yeast and allowing a longer proof. I have however decided to stay true to the recipes I’ve used to develop this formula and the amount of yeast did not cause any noticeable shortcomings.

    – I think it is fundamental to use a fork to make deep indents in each bread around its entire perimeter before breaking it in half; and I wouldn’t recommend slicing with a knife, no matter how much faster it would be.
    It is precisely the rugged surface created by the fork that makes for an interesting texture and flavour, due to the uneven browning.

    Fullkornsskorpor

    Makes around 80 pieces.

    485 g milk
    420 g plain flour
    360 g graham flour
    40 g fresh yeast
    14 g salt
    100 g butter, thinly sliced

    Place all the ingredients aside from the butter in the bowl of a stand-mixer fitted with the dough hook.

    Mix on medium speed for 10 minutes, or until medium gluten development. Add the butter, one slice at a time and knead for a further 10 minutes or so until the dough is smooth and elastic.

    Cover with clingfilm, and leave to proof at room temperature until doubled in size, around 30 minutes.

    Line 2 baking trays with baking paper.

    Place the dough onto a lightly floured work bench. Press to get rid of the gases, and divide in 40 pieces, at approximately 35g each.
    Ball each piece and place onto the prepared baking trays. Flatten each ball to 5-6cm in diameter using the palm of your hand.

    Cover with clingfilm and proof until doubled in size, around 45-60 minutes.
    While the bread if proofing, preheat the oven to 250°C/fan 230°C.

    When ready to bake, reduce the oven temperature to 225°C/fan 200°C. And bake, one tray at a time for 14 minutes, rotating halfway through baking if needed.

    Allow to cool down slightly, and using a fork, make deep indents in each bread around its entire perimeter; then break in half.

    Arrange the halves on the baking trays, and return to the oven for 8 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 120°C/fan 100°C and bake for a further hour, or until fully dried.

    The skorpor will keep beautifully in an airtight jar for well over a month.


  • Cake week-end au citron, confit de clémentines à la vanille

    Cake week-end au citron, confit de clémentines à la vanille

    [Lemon weekend cake, clementine confit]

    Originally published on January 29, 2010

    This is a cake I’ve made so many times over the years that I could make it with my eyes closed.

    I remember the first time I posted about it. It was early 2010, and a thin mantle of snow had fallen overnight, just enough to cover the ground.

    I had just started working as a commis pastry chef at the Capital, a small boutique hotel that would become the road map of my seven years in London. Yes, many of the chefs I consider my mentors and friends have – at one point or another – worked in the kitchen where I did my very first service.

    This reminds me that I’ll have to tell you, one day, about the time where I traveled across town – from Islington to Mayfair – on a vegetable delivery van to meet Chavot for an interview, leaving loaves of sourdough proofing in the kitchen above John Salt, and came back just in time to bake them before dinner service.

    But… this cake. A gâteau de voyage [a travel cake]. It doesn’t translate well, but the name alone suffices to evoke the soft lull of a holiday; the carefully wrapped slice, eaten on the night train; the afternoons at the beach; perhaps even, the long drive through the Massif Central.
    All gâteaux de voyage have the particularity to keep well at room temperature over a week or so. And this weekend cake is no exception, with both butter and crème fraiche to keep it moist, I find that it tastes even better the next day.

    It starts by whisking the eggs and sugar, with just a pinch of salt. The flours gets folded in. Then a third of the batter is mixed with the fats, then delicately folded back into the remaining batter.
    Although, I now often make it by adding the fats to the eggs, then folding in the flour.

    For the sake of staying true to my original recipe, I will leave the former method – as written in 2010, but know that both work fine, the latter leading to a slightly denser crumb, which I like when having cakes with tea or more accurately – and dare I say it – I love when dipping a slice in piping hot tea.
    Please, tell me you also give in to this ritual or am I the only one?

    And although, I can never resist it unadorned, I am rather fond of serving it with a generous spoonful of clementine confit and a dollop of crème fraiche.
    There is something about the suave softness of the compote against the gentle bite of the cake.
    Sometimes I even make it with tea – finely milled to a powder – folded into the batter. Other times, I leave it plain, perhaps with a touch of vanilla or orange blossom water, and we eat it with softly whipped cream and warmed raspberries.

    Yes, more than a recipe this really is blueprint and should be used as such.

    Just a quick note on baking temperatures: while I often bake this loaf cake at 175°C for approximately 45 minutes, I can only remind you of my favourite method for baking loaf cakes.
    5 minutes at 200°C/fan 180°C, 10 minutes at 180°C/fan 170°C, and around 25 minutes at 170°C/fan 160°C.

    Cake weekend au citron, confit de clémentines à la vanille

    Makes one loaf cake.

    For the clementines confit

    350 g clementines, around 3 to 4
    200 g caster sugar
    half a vanilla pod
    100 g water
    20 g cornflour diluted in 40 g cold water

    For the lemon weekend cake

    4 eggs
    250 g caster sugar
    zest from 2 organic lemons
    200 g plain flour
    one tsp baking powder
    150 g creme fraiche
    50 g butter, melted

    softened butter, extra for piping

    To serve

    a generous dollop of crème fraiche for each serving

    Make the clementine confit: bring a large pan of water to the boil. Plunge the clementines in it and simmer for 3 minutes. Sieve, placing the fruits in an ice-cold water bath as you do so. Repeat one more time. Then chill the clementines until cold enough to handle.
    Slice finely, and place in a pan along with the sugar, vanilla pod and seeds, and water.
    Simmer for 30 minutes or until reduced and almost candied. Then vigorously fold in the cornflour mixture. Allow to boil for a couple of minutes, and transfer to a bowl.
    The confit will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 3 months.

    Make the cake batter: preheat the oven to 175°C/fan 155°C; butter and flour a loaf tin.
    Place the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, and salt in a bowl, and whisk until thick and doubled in size.
    In an another bowl, mix the flour and baking powder, and fold into the egg mixture.
    Pour a third of the batter onto the cream and melted butter, mix well, and transfer back to the main batter mix, gently folding in as you do so.
    Pour into the prepared tin. If you want an even crack in the center of your loaf cake, pipe a thin line of softened butter across the batter; and bake for 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the cake comes out clean.
    Allow to cool down 20-30 minutes before unmoulding.
    If not eating right away, place into an airtight container and keep at room temperature.

    Place a slice of cake cut in half lengthwise in a plate. Top with both a spoonful of confit and a dollop of crème fraiche.