A January Food Hug

I have been verrrrrrry neglectful of my blog in recent months, which has made me realise why I enjoy it so; obviously I love to write, and this gives me a focus and an outlet; it makes me branch out a little more with my cooking; it means that I entertain more. So, here I am, back to my extensive-eating ways, full of good intentions for 2012. And what better way to get stuck right back in than by sharing some January-friendly food from one of my lovely Christmas present cookbooks? I have been coveting Lilly Higgins' lovely baking book, Make, Bake, Love, for quite a while, but when it first came out couldn't justify buying it - even for the usual myriad reasons that I use to justify buying cookbooks. I flicked through it on numerous occasions, my greedy beady eyes looking at the recipes and each time finding one that I could slot into a specific feeding point in my future. Not enough to justify spending the money or adding to my collection at that particular time, however. Oh but not until Christmas, that is - the season of justifying pretty much anything. Brillo. Down on the list it went for my Kris Kindle and when I found it in my pile of goodies on December 25th I was overjoyed. It really is pretty much the perfect baking book. It covers all bases; cakes for special occasions, cakes that you can have in the house for a few days to offer with tea to any guests, treats you can bring in to work, dessert-y bakes for when you have friends over for dins, small bakes like scones and buns, healthier bits, inexpensive goodies...you get the picture. Also, the design is pretty without being cloying, and the writing is whimsical without being irritating. You can get it on the Gill & Macmillan website for only €15.99. 

Use Your Loaf

Yup, they just keep on coming; the courgettes are still popping up outside, and after a bout of courgette fatigue I just had to take a break. But of course, when I ventured back in amid those large coarse leaves there were tons of little green marrow curving out hopefully in defiance of gravity, anxious to be picked and eaten before they turn into watery oversized marrow fit only for the compost heap. I decided to turn my hand to a sweet creation, having heard a bit about courgette cake here and there. I wasn't looking to create a fancy tiered-and-frosted affair, just something in a loaf tin that I could hack ginormous doorsteps off to eat with coffee in the morning. And the afternoon. And when people call in for coffee. And any other time I might be in the mood for it, really. I found a recipe to fit the bill in the Tess Kiros book Apples For Jam, a very pretty, nostalgic sort of book with recipes inspired by her childhood favourites, as well as what she cooks for her own family, and chapters divided up on the basis of the colour of the food. A tad quirky, perhaps - but then I never necessarily search for a recipe in a book on the basis of a title of a particular chapter; I would generally mark out a few after leafing through the whole book, or look for specific ingredients in the index at the back. This recipe is a nice simple, straightforward one, requiring minimal, if any, grocery shopping. I popped it in the oven right before I had my brekkie, it was in the oven just long enough to eat and get a few things done, and out just in time for a mid-morning coffee break.

Inspiration From Any Source Always Welcome

I spend money on cookbooks and time trawling through them; I fritter away hours online finding new food blogs and bookmarking recipes; I agonise over whether to buy cookery magazines and stand for torturous lengths of time in front of newsstands deliberating, when I know they'll end up coming home with me anyhow. And then I go and use a bread recipe that I find on the back of a packet of impulse-purchased flour. Yes, my idea of an impulse buy is a packet of flour, I know, I'm a bit wild like that. Listen smartarses, if all Celtic Tiger-era impulse purchases were along these lines the national debt levels would be significantly lower, so lets see me as an example and not an object of ridicule, ok?! 

Happy Birthday To Me

Things have been quiet round these parts of late, unlike in my actual real life, which has been pretty jam-packed - hence my absence. My efforts have mainly been concentrated on throwing a party to celebrate my thirtieth birthday and cleaning up afterwards. I'm not the only one who has aged this past week; my floorboards look like they fairly lived, quite a deal of food has passed through the door of my fridge and many glasses have met their fate in smithereens that I'm still finding in the oddest places. Rather than simply throw the front door open and invite my guests to come in and get drunk to mark my waving goodbye twenties and hello thirties, I figured I would make the festivities as food-filled as time would allow. Were I a more calm and organised hostess, this post would be peppered with pics of the lovely spring rolls that I made (for the first time - highly recommended - I'll be making them again), the crunchy, spicy Thai aubergine salad and the sticky honey & soy sauce marinated saussies, but there was no time or space for camera-wielding during my slightly frantic preparations. So, instead, the only documentation that remains of me eating my way merrily into my fourth decade (apart from an alarmingly rapid increase in the size of my thighs) is this lonely little slice of baked chocolate Oreo cheesecake. I had hit on the idea, you see, of making a cake for each decade; the chocolate ice-cream pie was an easy-peasy crowd-pleasy no-brainer; for those not so wild about chocolate, I decided to go for a lovely moist carrot cake - nice with tea or coffee for anyone who was deciding against alcohol; and since I'm quite a fan of a nice baked cheesecake I thought I would give this baked Oreo one another try, as I had already given it a go back in March and wasn't over the moon with the results. And so, while the sample slice in the above photo may seem rather jaded and forlorn, it is in fact a very triumphant little piece of cake that battled through the festivities of the night before to survive and become my breakfast the following morning. As for the rest of my culinary efforts, I feel that it is only fair I throw another party in the near future to share those tasty, picky little triumphs with you. Watch this space.

More Cake? Don't Mind If I Do

Hmmmm, yes I have indeed been up to my tonsils of late - yet somehow I have managed to fit a large amount of cake into my life. Curious. Or not so much - I mean, everyone thinks that baking is really hard but to be honest once you stick to what you're told then you're not going to go too wide of the mark. And time-wise I personally think that you get more return on your investment than when you cook a regular meal - like, it'll be there for the guts of a week, whereas a savoury, main coursey type meal things, well, they kind of disappear in a jiffy to be honest - in my presence, at any rate. When I was tweeting/FBing excitedly about my new Ottolenghi cookbook, my friend Gemma commented that I really must make the apple and olive oil cake with maple icing. Given that decisions are not always my forte when faced with an array of attractive options, I considered this one made. 

Cheer-Me-Up-Quick Cake

I reckon it's fair to say that I'm not the only person in the country who has needed a fair bit of cheering up of late. Cake is quite the cheerer-upper, I find, a comforting friend that doesn't disappoint. And what could provide more perk-me-up solace than a cake made from some beamingly orange vegetables? Carrot cake is a fresh, moist joy of a cake; I know that 'moist' isn't a very appetising word, but it perfectly describes that 'just so' texture between my-fan-oven-isn't-so-amazing-after-all and dammit-why-did-I-spend-so-long-in-the-shower. There's the nuts chunking out through the fluff, and somehow carrots taste like a natural treaty dessert ingredient, not at all like that gag-inducing Kelkin juice stuff that I went through a (frankly, pointless) phase of forcing into myself. Then there is the lovely chilled slab of icing on top; lets face it, the majority of the joy derived from a cake is via the icing, and I think that this applies to carrot cake more so than any other kind. This recipe came from my not-so-new-anymore Ottolenghi cookbook (as recommended by the lovely Lilly Higgins), which I haven't had much time to pore over and experiment with, unfortunately - but as things are slowly becoming less hectic I'm hoping to have some more quality time with this delight of a book in the near future. In the meantime, I honed in on this classic beauty to brighten up my little world.