cooking « Niles's Blog

Last weekend I threw the house open to the lovely people in my tower for our now annual Christmas social. We initially decided we ought to have a Christmas social but that everyone’s diary in December is too hectic, so we have ours in February instead.

I like cooking for people and having people in my house but I actually don’t do it very often, so it’s nice to have an excuse.

(Laid the table before counting properly AGAIN! and had to put an extra place setting in at the last minute.)

I thought that the menu had not evolved much from last year, but looking back it seems I did simplify quite a bit. I did the mulled apple juice again and offered some of the crab apple vodka to those who were both not driving and suitably aged.

It’s been cold this year, so I didn’t want to do cold starters and desserts again, and so went for a slightly ambitious three cooked courses. Crudités were still the main feature of the starter, then I was initially thinking fondue… but it would be hard to put the pot where everyone could reach it, so went for two separate baked camemberts so that each half of the table could reach. I was planning for 8 but one of us was ill on the night and we were 7 instead. Two vegetarians amongst our numbers and I was conscious that anything properly called camembert is by AOC definition not vegetarian, so there was some hummus available instead.

The mains as last year were baked potatoes with beans, cheese (veggie cheddar), sausages and Quorn sausages and homemade coleslaw.

I actually took hardly any photos this year, but I did take quite a lot of the dessert. I was making Simon Hopkinson’s sticky toffee pudding – I blogged about it before in 2013 and the recipe is still on the BBC, and it’s still decadent and delicious. The basic recipe says serves 4, and the only way that is true is if you don’t eat anything else for an entire weekend. I still doubled it and cooked it in a disposable foil roasting tin for a dessert that fed 7 people on the night, did doggy bags to take for absent partners, fed my neighbours who liked the photo on Facebook, and did me and T the following day. I still have spare ingredients and I’m making it again today for half term pudding club tomorrow 🙂

In its doubled up form you end up needing to buy over a litre of cream!

The basic date sponge cooked the night before.

With the first sticky toffee sauce poured over the top then put back under the grill.

Loads of leftovers!

I also made fudge – this Nigella recipe ish. There weren’t shelled pistachios available when I went shopping and I didn’t fancy shelling 150 grams myself, so I just used chopped hazelnuts. And glacé cherries, because why not? And then, having made fudge, and having been given two boxes of After Eights… I forgot to bring either of them out with the tea and coffee! So there were loads leftover which made nice end of term gifts at school for colleagues instead as well as satisfying my own chocolate craving whenever I walk past the fridge.

The way I make my banana loaf has evolved a little since I first wrote about it, so I thought I would update my recipe. With pictures!

I don’t have scales at the moment, so everything is judged by eye. Break two eggs into the big blender cup.

Add roughly the same volume of vegetable oil

And roughly the same volume of sugar. I’m using dark brown sugar because it makes the resulting taste caramelly and toffeeey and delicious.

Add two bananas and a heaped teaspoon of ground mixed spice. You can also add any other fruit and veg you want at this point. I’ve put a carrot in this time – topped and tailed, cut into smaller pieces, but no need to peel. I often put an apple in too.

You can make other sorts of cake with the same base – I’ve made a pear and chocolate cake this way – add a heaped tablespoon of cocoa instead of the spice. You can also add cocoa nibs and desiccated coconut at the later stage.

I am usually doing this to use up extremely ripe bananas that have gone past how I like to eat them as fruit, but today I bought extra bananas specially.

Blitz

Pour into a bowl and add a few handfuls of the sorts of things you like to find in a fruitcake. I’ve used raisins and glacé cherries today. I usually add chopped walnuts but I’ve run out. I’d always prefer sultanas to raisins but they aren’t always available.

Add enough self raising flour on top to completely cover the mix and stir in with a wooden spoon. You’re aiming for dropping consistency, if you know what that means.

Pour into a lined 2lb loaf tin. Loaf tin liners used to come from Lakeland, but now they are showing up in larger supermarkets too. If you don’t think you’re going to make 40 cakes any time soon, you can also just line it the old fashioned way with plain parchment paper.

Bake in a 170 deg fan oven for around an hour.

Check after 45 minutes to see if it is burning. Stick a knife in it to see if the inside is cooked. If the knife comes out clean, it is cooked. If cake batter sticks to the knife, it is still raw inside. If the cake looks finished on top, or is starting to catch or burn, cover the cake with tin foil so that the top doesn’t brown further, but so that the inside can catch up.

If you have go out at this point, it can sometimes work to turn the oven off now and let the rest cook in the residual heat.

If not, check the cake again every 10-15 minutes by repeating the knife test.

This is an extremely forgiving recipe. You can even make it without the eggs if you want to try for vegan – I tried a dollop of golden syrup instead that time, and it was ok…

Niles's Blog

Teaching, food and other random, infrequent wibblings

Tag Archives: cooking

Ringers’ dinner II

Banana loaf recipe – with pictures