Kitchen Antics

Kitchen Antics / Sock Fluff — 5 Comments
3
Mar 10

Come with Me, Cupcake!

Some of you may recognise the above as a quote from the latest Star Trek movie, out of context it sounds only marginally sillier than in; when stated in a burly voiced way by my husband it means only one thing, he is about to devour another cream cheese frosted cupcake.

Cupcakes

The story behind this characteristic outburst of silliness, as always, involves food. We had been invited over to Sunday lunch at friends’ in Cambridge and as usual alot of tasty homemade goodies were to be had, including very attractive, moreish cupcakes.

My friend emailed me the recipe and I made a batch on Monday. The recipe was from the Telegraph, and I found that really one should make 1/2 the quantity of cream cheese frosting – because you really do wonder about yourself when you are standing in a kitchen at the age of 30 seriously contemplating eating the extra frosting with a spoon, arguing that since it is made with Philadelphia it is really OK to do so – and double the quantity of cupcake mix.

In true Nigella style – well I’m guessing here are I’ve never watched a cooking show properly in my life save for a few episodes of MasterChef last September where I learnt that Michel Roux jnr likes a good jus and believes that chefs are in general far too stingy with their caramel sauce – I made up four sub-batches of the frosting: pink, pale blue, pale green and easter cheep yellow. We ended up with 8 cupcakes (prompting the decision to in future make a double batch of mix) very prettily iced and decorated with the pre-approved sprinkles – Jon drew the line at silver balls that crack his teeth.

Left with an inordinate amount of icing I ended up making another (1/2) batch of the cake mix and using the mini flan cakes threw together a four layer cake, which I ended up devouring yesterday. All I can say is cream cheese frosting is addictive.

I shall be making them again, Jon and have decided that we shall get a cute cupcake stand when we next descend on John Lewis, for Amelia’s birthday, since cupcakes will negate the need for cutting a store bought cake into an irregular number of evenly matched slices.

Oh, and please spare a thought for my hand mixer which gave its all in the pursuit of mixing the frosting… Farewell gentle appliance, and darn you!

Adventures in Baby Wrangling / Kitchen Antics — 1 Comment
23
Feb 10

Broccoli Pancakes

brocpanThankfully Amelia isn’t a terribly fussy eater which is just as well as I tend to experiment and Jon favours dishes such as stroganoff or stir fries which clear out the sinuses.

Recently, as Amelia has started to run amok slightly less, I’ve been able to start cooking again while she is up and roaming about the down stairs and start baking. I stocked up on tubs of cream of tartar, bicarb of soda and baking powder and on the back of the cream of tartar tub saw a recipe for Drop Scones or Scotch Pancakes.

The upshot is that Jon and Amelia have been eating an inordinate amount of pancakes recently, first plain, then with blueberries mixed into the batter and lately using wholemeal flour. A week or so ago I got the craziest notion to use up some broccoli and having slightly overcooked some broccoli tops mixed them in with the trusty pancake batter, cooked them up and discovered Amelia’s greatest passion since Cheese.

The recipe calls for

  • approx 1 head of broccoli
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 pint of milk
  • 1oz caster sugar (I used the golden unrefined)
  • 4oz self raising flour (whole/white or a mix)
  • 1/2 tsp of cream of tartar

optional

  • paprika powder (plain or smoked or both!)
  • dry garlic in a grinder

Method

  • Cut off most of the large broccoli stalk and break up into florets – cook until the �florets can be mashed with a fork (i.e. just past done)
  • Drain and �stir with a fork to break up the florets allow to cool before preparing batter
  • Heat your frying pan over a medium heat (which might be cooler than you expect)
  • Mix the flour and sugar
  • Beat the egg and milk together and stir into the dry mix.
  • Add the cream of tartar beat or stir until you have a smooth batter.
  • Add as generous a dash paprika/grind of garlic as you prefer and mix. (We are quite keen for Amelia to get used to the concept of flavours )
  • Add the broccoli to the batter and stir well with a spoon.

Pour about 2 dessert spoonfuls of batter into your frying pan – I use a nonstick and don’t use any oil.

Bubbles will begin to show on the pancake about 1 cm from the edge as it begins to cook after about 30 seconds, run your spatula around the edge, working your way into the centre and slowly tease it away from the pan, don’t turn it until the middle isn’t so runny that it looks like you will loose it over the side when you turn.

The smell of the paprika is amazing as it cooks and you aren’t left with an over powering over boiled broccoli smell.

The pancakes will still have a sweetish taste from the sugar.

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