Candied Lemon Peel - First Trial, Needs Work

Ingredients:

1 Lemon, thinly sliced
1 cup caster sugar

Method:

1) Put lemon into cold water and bring to a boil. Drain.

2) Combine 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar and heat until sugar is dissolved. Add lemon and simmer for one hour, until lemon slices are translucent.

3) Carefully remove slices and place on parchment to cool.

Musings:

In no way do I think candied peel is for everybody. One of my children picks out out of his hot cross buns, and many others I know find it the worst part of their Christmas pudding. But I personally love it, and want to be able to make my own since the shop bought options are so miserable these days. You used to be able to easily purchase whole pieces of candied fruit (in admittedly dusty boxes), but now you can only get microscopic candied peel in mixed, bland tubs.

One of the standard bakes that I find pleases most crowds is a Lemon Drizzle Cake, but it can often be left looking quite drab next to other options. I thought I should try my hand at making candied peel so that I can pimp it up when necessary.

This recipe wasn't awful, but it wasn't amazing, either. I think more cooking of the peel is required, so will probably try this recipe next time.

Salted Caramel Brownies

Ingredients:

Caramel

1/2 cup caster sugar

4 Tbsp butter

1/4 tsp flaky sea salt

3 Tbsp double cream

Brownie

100g 74% dark chocolate

115g butter

7/8 cup caster sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 flaky sea salt

2/3 cup plain flour

Method:

Caramel First:

1) Set square of baking paper over a medium sized plate. 

2) In a medium, dry saucepan over medium-high heat, melt your sugar. This will take around 5 minutes, and you can shoogle the pan around if chunks appear in order to melt them. You are aiming for a copper colour here, nothing lighter, nothing darker (that will mean it's burnt)

3) Remove from heat as soon as this happens and add the butter. Stir in, but it won't combine perfectly. That's ok.

4) Add the cream and return to medium high heat, bringing back to a simmer and melting any sugar that solidified. Cook it until it darkens just slightly. 

5) Pour the caramel onto the parchment and transfer it to your freezer until it's solid, probably around 20 minutes or so.

Brownies Next:
6) Preheat oven to 180C and line an 8X8 inch pan with baking paper
7) Melt your butter and then add the chocolate. Hopefully there will be enough heat in the butter to melt the chocolate without further heating, but heat further if required in short, low spurts.
8) Mix in butter, then eggs, then vanilla, then salt, then flour.
9) Remove your caramel from the freezer and chop into rough 1 inch squares, then fold all but a few of these into your batter.
10) Scrape batter into pan and sprinkle remaining pieces over the top.
11) Bake in oven for 25-30 minutes, erring on the side of under-baking if in doubt, as brownies will harden and continue to cook as they cool
12) Cool completely before cutting if you want nice, clean cuts. Eat with a spoon if you don't.


Further Nonsense:

It was my birthday the other day, and my husband had been asking me all week what kind of cake I'd like. The family celebration cake in recent years has become a fraisier, but this cake is complicated, and I knew I'd be making one next month for my son, and I didn't want my husband to make a cake. This is not because he is bad at baking - far from it, he is very skilled in the kitchen. It is the cleaning up afterwards he isn't as good at. And the last thing I want to stare at on my birthday is a kitchen that looks like drug dealers have hit it while looking for the secret stash. So I told him I'd like to try a new recipe out...and then quickly had to decide what recipe that was going to be.

One item I often get from my local bakers is a salted caramel brownie. A good brownie is a difficult thing to master, and a caramel brownie makes this even tricker. But one of my colleagues had brought some into the office to much acclaim, and I thought I'd get the recipe off her. I messaged her on the morning of the big day, and she quickly sent over the link. Scanning down the list, I saw I needed a couple of items, but that was ok - part of my birthday treat was going to be the weekly trip to the supermarket. Lockdown birthdays are awesome.

The original recipe, from Smitten Kitchen, called for baking chocolate, but I wasn't up for finding that. It has only one use, and I prefer to get dark chocolate as it can be used for non-baking emergencies as well as in recipes. The rest of the ingredients were simple enough to find, and once mid-afternoon hit, I set to work, made them, cut them into a tower, then handed candles I had bought to my husband and told him to gather everyone and sing to me so that I could eat some. So part control freak, but also part willing to take action if I see no one else is gonna do anything.

The real key to this recipe is making solid caramel. Before I'd made runny caramel which just disappeared into brownies, but this gave me definite blobs of it, meaning you immediately knew what you were in for. The brownies recipe itself may need tinkered with, but I know I'll use this caramel recipe again for sure.

Cherry Streusel Cake (or cherry coffee cake if you're American)

Ingredients

Cake:
280g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
310ml sour cream or yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
60g butter
190g sugar
2 eggs

Streusel:
180g flour
160g finely chopped walnuts or pecans
260g light brown sugar
150g melted butter
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Cherries:
220g frozen, pitted cherries

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180C with a rack in the middle & line a 9X13inch pan with baking paper.

1) Blitz all the streusel toppings together in a food processor and set aside. If you don't have one, just mix by hand. Melted butter helps it all lump together nicely, but you can skip melting it if you like and get a more crumbly texture
2) In a large bowl, cream your butter and sugar.
3) Beat in eggs one at a time
4) Measure your dry ingredients together in one bowl, and your yoghurt/sour cream mixed with vanilla in another.
5) Add a third of the flour mix to your large bowl and mix in. Then add half your yoghurt/sour cream mix and stir in. Then some flour, then some wet stuff, then the last of the flour.
6) Pour into your lined pan and spread to evenly cover the bottom.
7) Scatter the cherries over the batter
8) Scatter the Streusel over the top and push around to get even coverage. You may get geysers of batter that erupt through the cherries and streusel, but that's ok.
9) Bake and check after 40 minutes. You may need a lot more, but that's a good time to check and turn the pan for even baking.

EXCLUSIVE: THE REAL STORY!!!

I was out on my weekly shopping excursion the other day, equipped with my granny trolley as well as my trusty rucksack. The mission was mainly to source fresh fruit and veg, seeing as we have our flour needs covered (thank you, 16kg bags), as well as our meat and much of our dairy delivered (milk a bit of an exception, as no milkman will deliver to flats here, it seems). By the time I got to the freezer, my rolling basket was fairly loaded up, but I was quite keen to get some frozen fruit, as the kids seem to like it, and it's super cheap. There was only one bag of raspberries left, but an abundance of cherries, so I grabbed one. I quickly remembered that my kids don't really like frozen cherries as much, and I don't like the mess they make thawing them, but it was too late. I had lifted the bag, and in these Covid19 times, you don't put the bag back in the supermarket. Into the shopping basket they went, and straight into the freezer when I got home.

While rifling through the drawers a few days later they glared at me accusingly, untouched. I apologized and promised soon, very soon, I'd find a use for them...then I shut the door in their face. a couple days later, they called out again, and I gave in. I pulled out my trusty Joy of Cooking, and made what Americans call a coffee cake, but put in cherries where the recipe called for either apples or cranberries, and doubling the amount of streusel that the recipe called for.

But there's still half a bag of cherries in the freezer.