F1 Foods: Singapore Round-up and the next challenge: Japan

Either because the linky was only open for a very short time, because I didn't really publicise it as I was away on holiday then travelling for work or simply because nobody was inspired by Singapore to cook any dish, the only entry for this round of Formula 1 Foods was my own. Still, it gives me a chance to direct you again to my Singapore Sling bundt cake if you didn't already see it.

This weekend it's the Japanese Grand Prix which may be another difficult one for some of you - though it doesn't have to be baking; you can make rice and noodle dishes too, or anything inspired by a Japanese cartoon character (Hello Kitty cake, anyone?).

This time you've got until Sunday October 4 to send in any Japanese-inspired recipes using the linky below!


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Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread

 

 

I’ve already described how I used up some soft bananas from a fruit box we were sent at work in this banoffee pie with a chocolate cornflake base. There were actually more bananas left over and I’ve always wanted to make banana bread but never got round to it (the fact that I don’t like banana also puts me off!). As I have mentioned before, once a month I spend a day in the office of a design agency that we work with to produce a particular internal project and it’s usually a very long day.

 

As I spend so much time with them, and a couple of them end up having to work late due to this project, I’ve gotten into the habit of taking cake. It seemed a good idea because I have a small team at work and people don’t want to eat cake all the time, so this way I had a new audience – one who wasn’t bored of cake. They were very appreciative so I’ve now made cake every time I’ve been to their office. This time was great fun – not long after I had arrived, I overheard a conversation between two of the team that they were hungry and didn’t have any food in the office. I turned around and innocently remarked “well I did bring cake” – the look on their faces was priceless!

 

I knew there would be enough hungry people in the office to eat the cake that I could make banana bread and it didn’t matter if I didn’t like it. As it was, it tasted really good – I didn’t want a whole slice as the banana flavour was quite strong but it was lovely and moist and the addition of chocolate was lovely. I took inspiration from this recipe but did make it differently.

 

Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread – an original recipe by Caroline Makes

 

Makes one 1-litre loaf cake

  

 

You need:

¾ cup caster sugar

2 ripe bananas

½ cup crème fraiche

2 eggs

2 cups self-raising flour

4 tbsp cocoa powder

 

Preheat oven to 180C.

Mash the bananas and cream with the sugar, then add the crème fraiche and eggs. Fold in the flour.

Separate the mixture into two bowls and add the cocoa powder to one bowl.

 

 

Grease a loaf tin and spoon in the chocolate banana cake mixture, then spoon the plain mixture on top. Use the spoon to swirl the two around – take a spoonful of the bottom layer and bring it up to the top, twisting as you do so. Repeat this along the length of the tin.

 

 

 

Bake in the pre-heated oven for 50-60 minutes, testing with a skewer to see if it is cooked through. Allow to cool in the tin and then turn out.

 

 

This cake slices really well and because there is no frosting, it’s something you can wrap up and take on a picnic or in your lunchbox for work. It was really moist and the chocolate flavour went perfectly with the banana and considering that I don’t even like banana, I would say this was a success!

 

As I used up old bananas I'm sending this to the No Waste Food Challenge, hosted this month by Foodie Quine on behalf of Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary.

 

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Jareth's Temptation - Peaches, Cream, Meringue and Pomegranate Dessert

Not to be confused with Jansson's Temptation, which is something different entirely - this dessert is inspired by my favourite 80s movie.

Labyrinth came out when I was seven years old and a friend of mine had it on VHS - my family didn't even have a video recorder at that time. I absolutely loved the film, mainly for the songs - the animated characters were on the whole a bit irritating for my liking (anyone else find Hoggle really annoying?) but the idea of the quest to find the baby brother was the sort of thing I couldn't get enough of.

Best of all though were the two leads, Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie. I don't think I even knew who David Bowie was at that point but he was mesmerising (and looking back now, very overtly sexual though I was blissfully ignorant of that sort of thing at the time!).

Connelly was only 16 when she played the role and she was breathtakingly beautiful in her ball gown in the scene where Hoggle has given Sarah (Connelly) a peach, enchanted by Jareth (Bowie) so she will lose her memories and will forget she is looking for her brother. That's probably my favourite scene in the movie.

I decided to make a dessert inspired by that scene, so peaches had to be the main ingredient. I also wanted something that would conjure up the white ballgown that Sarah wore, hence whipped cream and meringue. Finally, I decided the sharpness of pomegranate would cut through in the way that Jareth's intentions behind giving Sarah the peach are malicious - and pomegranate seeds are a symbol of fertility which adds the sexual overtones. All that in a dessert!

The recipe is very simple as I bought a shop-bought meringue due to lack of time. Slice up a fresh peach and drizzle over some honey; grill or roast them until softened and slightly browned. Pile on top of the meringue, top with whipped cream and drizzle with pomegranate molasses and pomegranate seeds as well if desired.

I'm sharing this with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is J. I hope she doesn't mind this entry - I've given it the name of Jareth's Temptation though none of the ingredients actually begin with J! I've been away on holiday and for work for most of this month so this is the best I could do....

 

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Meal Planning Monday - Week 38/39

I've just got back from over 2 weeks on holiday in America - and am lauching into full-on wedding planning mode. My fiancé proposed just before we went away so now as well as shifting the weight I inevitably put on during our holiday I also want to lose weight before I start wedding dress shopping! And did you know that wedding dress boutiques advise you choose your dress 6-9 months in advance to allow enough time for alterations? If we are able to have a summer wedding next year that means I need to start dress shopping right away, but I'm not doing that until I've shifted at least the weight I put on on holiday!

It does mean that my meal planning is more important than ever and I will go back to planning breakfasts as well as lunches and dinners, as I used to do. I won't be specifically following Slimming World as I found various parts of the diet (e.g the 'syn free' foods) don't always work that well for me, but I will be using a lot of SW recipes and meal plans as well as the various other diet recipe books I've got. Which is not to say I won't have the occasional indulgent meal, or fall off the wagon sometimes, but I will do my best. I will still be baking but only to take cakes into work or if it's someone's birthday or other special occasion - and even if I do make a cake, that doesn't mean I'm going to eat all of it! I also have a bunch of things to post on the blog that I made over the summer so don't assume that I've already gone back on my word!


Saturday (I know I'm posting this on Monday but I needed to plan at the weekend as well and it wasn't worth doing a separate post!)
Breakfast: for me, boiled egg and 1 piece of dry toast; the Other Half slept late due to jet lag
Lunch: bacon sandwich for him, sardines on toast for me
Dinner: Harissa lamb stew from SW recipe with couscous for me; toad in the hole for him
Dessert: Angel delight for him as we have lots of milk (the cat sitter bought far more than we needed!); fresh fruit for me

Sunday
Breakfast: boiled egg and toast
Lunch: Out looking at wedding venues
Dinner: gammon with chips for him and pineapple ring and veg for me

Monday
Breakfast: cereal and fat free yogurt
Lunch: salmon with butternut squash salad
Dinner: chicken with Schwartz Grill Mates marinade with potato wedges for him and veg for me

Tuesday
Breakfast: cereal and fat free yogurt
Lunch: tuna pasta salad
Dinner: flying to Edinburgh in the evening for a work thing. Will have to eat at the airport.

Wednesday
Breakfast - in hotel
Lunch - at conference
Dinner - at airport; flying back late

Thursday
Breakfast - at a conference and need to get there early so will take a cereal bar with me
Lunch: probably food provided at conference but I will take something - tuna pasta salad
Dinner: have tickets for a Deliciously Ella event tonight but might not get there in time from the conference. If I do get there in time, I won't have had time to have dinner so will have to take something with me.

Friday
Normal day back at work, thank goodness!
Breakfast: cereal with fat free plain yogurt
Lunch: sandwich or salad
Dinner: coconut prawn curry for me, chicken curry for him

Saturday
Breakfast: boiled egg and toast
Lunch: out on a hen day/night
Dinner: out on a hen day/night

Sunday looking at wedding venues?

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Royal Icing Run-Outs

Royal icing run-outs are a lovely way to decorate a cake, and also are a great help to the busy or novice cake decorator, as you make them in advance. This helps save time when you bake and decorate the cake; also (and perhaps more importantly for some people) you create these on a cake board, and place them on the cake when they are set – so if they go wrong you can start again without messing up the cake!

 

I’d never really done this before (though I had flooded biscuits with royal icing which is a similar technique) so it was an interesting thing to cover in my cake decorating class at South Thames College last term.

 

To start you need a template; this can be something you’ve drawn yourself or printed out from the internet but it’s much easier with a pattern to follow. Ideally one with strong black lines and spaces in between; some of the class used a Hello Kitty picture while I did this butterfly.

 

The first question is how to make royal icing for piping and flooding? There are a few ways, usually using egg white though you can find vegan recipes online (try here for instance).

 

If you can get albumen from a cake decorating shop (this is another name for egg white but can be bought in pasteurised powder form) you can make smaller quantities, but if you are using actual eggs, here’s a recipe that will make a bowl of royal icing:

 

175g icing sugar

1 large egg white

1 tsp lemon juice

 

Carefully beat the egg white with the icing sugar until you can then use a hand mixer without the powder going everywhere! Then add the lemon juice and mix until incorporates; the mixture should be slightly stiff. It will set if left out so cover with clingfilm whenever it’s not in use.

 

Using a small piping bag, which you can buy or make by folding greaseproof paper (you probably need to watch a YouTube video rather than read my attempt to explain).

 

Decide which colours you want to use and separate the icing into as many bowls as you need, and colour with a little gel food colouring (preferable to liquid colours).

 

 

Place a piece of cellophane over your template. The easiest way to do this is cut open an A4 file pocket. It’s a good idea to lightly rub down the cellophane with oil or trex so the icing doesn’t stick.

 

 

You don’t need a nozzle on your piping bag – the bag will probably be too small anyway. Just snip off the end and carefully squeeze so you have a line of icing to follow the outline of your template.

 

Allow to set for a few minutes then add some water to thin down whichever colour icing you want to use to fill in the sections in the middle of the design. Use a piping bag again for precision; you can use a cocktail stick to help nudge the icing into any corners. The filler icing needs to be in a quite thick layer so you can pick the design up when it’s set. For this reason, you need to make sure that you don’t leave any gaps.

 

All lines need to be connected to the outside outline as well – so with the butterfly I had to change some of the patterns on the wings so they were connected to the outer line. Otherwise you will find that when you pick up your run-out when it’s dry, some of the design will remain on the board!

 

Leave to set overnight or longer – we had to leave ours a week between cake decorating classes but it shouldn’t take that long! You can then carefully lift the run-out off of the cellophane, and use it on top of a cake. These also look really good standing up around the side of a cake depending on what design you have chosen.

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Singapore Sling Bundt Cake

This weekend is the Singapore Grand Prix and when I started thinking about  what I could make for Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I've been running this year, my mind went straight to one thing: Singapore Slings. I discovered the cocktail when I was on holiday in Singapore and had one at the Raffles hotel where the drink was invented; you can read my review here.



Here's the recipe for the cocktail itself, on the back of a notebook I bought in the hotel. Until now when I've made it at home I've left out the Dom Benedictine as it's expensive and you only use a tiny amount (and I don't know any other cocktails it's used in) but this time decided to push the boat out and buy a bottle.

I decided to recreate the flavours of the cocktail in a cake and that the form of a bundt would work best.

I turned to bundt queen Rachel McGrath's website Dolly Bakes and used her 'build a bundt' recipe for the basic mixture to which I could add my own flavours. Click on the link to see her recipe and have a look around her fab site. I did leave out the yogurt from Rachel's recipe as I was going to add something else for the moisture but otherwise I followed her recipe.

I decided to put pineapple in the cake as this is the predominant flavour of the cocktail (as it's the main mixer as you can see from the quantities above). I used fresh pineapple that I had previously chopped and frozen; I reckon it's the equivalent of one small 227g tin once drained or around 200g of fresh pineapple. Make sure it's finely chopped and add to the bundt mixture.

I mixed up a cocktail with all the ingredients apart from the bitters which I didn't have and the pineapple juice, so this was basically neat alcohol. I poured it all into the cake mixture and stirred it in. (This replaces the yogurt in Rachel's recipe).

I greased my bundt tin with Cake Release and baked the bundt for about an hour, by which point it seemed to be cooked when I tested it with a skewer. I left it to cool in the tin and when I went to turn it out... disaster! The top (or bottom, when it's in the tin) of the cake stuck to the tin and a fair bit of it broke off on the way out. I was left with a pretty unappealing top to the cake.

It should have been this shape...

.. and instead it looked like this.

I had already decided I would cover it with a Singapore Sling glaze so once again mixed up the neat cocktail and added a generous dash of pineapple juice for the flavour, but didn't water it down too much. I mixed a spoonful of the cocktail with some icing sugar, adding a little more liquid until I got the right consistency - an icing that I could pour over the cake that would run down the sides but that wasn't too thin.

You can still see how misshapen the top of the cake is, which was a shame, but when I served this at a barbecue to celebrate my engagement in August, I started to apologise for the way the cake looked but was told that it was the taste that mattered and that it tasted great! I had no idea what to expect, having invented this recipe and never tried it before, but it seemed very successful. The cake itself was light and moist and the flavours of the cocktail really came through in the icing with the cake itself tasting predominantly of pineapple but with a little extra something. Now if I make it again I just need to figure out how to get it out of the tin in one piece!

You may also like to check out this Bellini Bundt I made previously.

I'm sending this Singapore Sling bundt cake to Formula 1 Foods as the Grand Prix this weekend is taking place in Singapore.

I'm also sending this to Simply Eggcellent, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen, as his challenge this month is an easy one - cakes (which use eggs).

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F1 Foods Italy roundup and the next challenge: Singapore

We missed the Italian Grand Prix as we were on holiday but my fiancé was following it online and I made sure I did my post for Formula 1 Foods before I went away! It did mean I didn't have much of a chance to promote the challenge though so there were only a couple of entries; I had hoped there would be more as Italy is a much easier theme than many!

I did an entire Italian buffet for my fiancé's birthday this year and hadn't blogged about it until now so here you can see a selection of ideas and recipes which are really easy if you are feeding a crowd.

Suelle at Mainly Baking made this almond, raspberry and rose polenta cake which is both gluten free and dairy free;  she says it's one of the best cakes of this kind that she has ever made and the fresh fruit gives a lovely seasonal twist.

The other entry this month came from Johanna at Green Gourmet Giraffe who made angel-hair pasta with feta, sundried tomatoes and spinach. I'm always on the look out for interesting pasta recipes and this looks great; and a good way to get in some more veg.

Thanks to everyone who sent in their Italian-inspired recipes. The next few Grand Prix races are quite close together so there isn't a whole lot of time to allow for the next challenge, which is of course Singapore. So you have until Tuesday 22nd to send in anything inspired by Singapore! The linky is here:

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