A Soul! A Soul! A Soul Cake!

Soul cake with perry - not an ingredient, just a good accompaniment

As you may be aware, yesterday was All Souls' Day. As I mentioned in my Halloween post last year, it was traditional on this day for people to hand out soul cakes to 'soulers', people who went around singing and praying for the dead. So I thought this year that I would make some soul cakes myself, as a good activity following an evening requiem service at church.

My understanding is that there are many variations on soul cakes... which isn't at all surprising when you consider that the concept dates back to the medieval period, when people around the UK couldn't just look up a recipe on the internet and see what them in the next county were cooking. The thing that unites them seems to be sweet spices and dried fruit.

Here is the recipe I used, taken from the blog Lavender and Lovage:

Ingredients:

175g butter

175g caster sugar

3 egg yolks

450g plain flour

2 teaspoons mixed spice (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger)

100g currants

(a little milk to mix)

Step 1:

Pre-heat oven to 180c.

Step 2: 

Cream the butter and sugar together, and then beat in the egg yolks.

Step 3:

Sift the flour and mixed spice into the mixture. 

(At this point I realised that the mixed spice I'd bought had coriander in it... Although the person who I had in mind as I baked very much liked coriander, I wasn't sure how it would go in sweet cookies. Fortunately I had whole nutmegs and ground cinnamon and ginger in my cupboard. So I grated some nutmeg, spread the measure between the three spices and the day was saved...)

Step 4:

Stir in the currants and add enough milk to make a soft dough, similar to scones. 

(I only added the tiniest dash of milk for luck, and then added up probably compensating when I floured things up as a rolled the dough out... So long story short is that milk may not even be necessary. Play it by feel.)

Step 5: 

Roll (or pat, if you're like me and don't have a rolling pin) the dough out on a floured surface. If you have a round biscuit cutter, use this. If you're like me and don't, roll into balls and then squish flat. You should get about 12. Place on a greased or/or lined baking tray and mark with a cross.

Step 6:

Bake the cakes for 10 to 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack (... if you have one...)

Step 7:

Eat and/or distribute to family, friends and neighbours. Enjoy with a drink and make a toast to loved ones who have gone ahead of us.

The Grass Beneath My Feet, a Walk on Sand...

I have been off the radar for some time - the result of some unexpected and major life events - but am making a return to blogland now. I am, however, currently still in the process of looking for a new flat to move into, so I may still be slightly sporadic for a while at least. But I'm definitely back, and I have a little stash of things to post about. 

The first of these is my Bank Holiday weekend visit to Kew Gardens, in the last week before my year's membership expires. Fortunately I opted to go yesterday, when there was some sun and warmth about, rather than today, which is all about torrential downpours and hanging about inside with cats (I'm currently cat-sitting...).

In addition to being the last week of my year's membership, it's also the last few weeks of the current event running at Kew Gardens, called Plantasia and being all about the healing power of plants. In addition to Plant Family Croquet (see the picture above), where I learnt about how plants are turned into medicines, I went on the Barefoot Walk. (The Barefoot Walk came before the croquet for me, hence the slightly dirty feet in the croquet picture!)

The Barefoot Walk had you removing your shoes and walking across and through various textures and surfaces, including stones, bark, charcoal, logs, water... and thick, sticky mud.

Starting off...

You could opt to take the dry route or the mud... I went with the mud, of course!

A fork in the road...

It was wonderful and fun, and I opted to leave my shoes off afterwards, except when I got to croquet, as I thought I might not be allowed to play barefoot! But I'm a great believer of slipping off your shoes whenever you feasibly can when you come into contact with the natural earth. It is definitely re-energising at any time, and I very much enjoyed all the textures and temperatures and squelching of the Barefoot Walk.

Then I checked out the Healing Giant - a garden planted in the shape of a human body, with the relevant herbs and such planted in the areas that they are reported to heal.

But what was my summery Kew outfit for this adventure, aside from my new(ish) blue shoes? Well, it was my jolly daffodil/ray of sunshine Easter dress. Which is a good thing as I never got around to posting any Easter outfit photos here as Easter Sunday was such a rainy, un-photogenic day this year. And what's the best thing about this dress, apart from the fact that it's such a happy colour, and exactly the colour dress I've been wanting for ages? I made it myself!

Yes, indeedy, I bought a 1960s pattern from Patterns from the Past and headed out to Walthamstow Markets, then got out my neglected sewing machine and whipped up this baby. It wasn't smooth sailing either, as I launched straight in without trying the sizing beforehand and the bodice was WAY too big around but also WAY too short. So I had to adjust it to be slimmer and add in some length. Fortunately, I could work it so that the seam where I had to sew in the extra strip of fabric came under the bust and it ended up not looking like an accident...

A close-up to allow you to appreciate the fancy contrast hand-stitched bit around the collar (that was actually part of the pattern, not an accident correction...)

Oh, and the other awesome thing about this dress? There's a matching jacket! But that's in storage at the moment as part of the flat-moving process, so I teamed it with a cardigan instead when it got a little bit chillier yesterday.

Dress: made by me
Cardigan: Charity shop
Hat: Accessorize
Shoes: Jones Bootmaker

And here are some flowers to complement the colours of my dress. As I suggested, the two shades of yellow I picked for my dress were inspired by daffodils, appropriately for the timing of an Easter dress. But these flowers are nice too... and there's some bees in there, as an added bonus.

So, I will leave you with a few lines from one of my favourite Belle & Sebastian songs, Asleep on a Sunbeam, which feel especially appropriate to the Barefoot Walk and the last days of the season:

Another summer's passing by

All I need is somewhere I can feel the grass beneath my feet

A walk on sand, a fire I can warm my hands

My joy will be complete.

And, indeed, it follows on to be appropriate for my flat-hunting:

I thought about a new destination

I'm never short of new inspiration

Roll out the map and mark it with a gin...

Good bye, Kew! It's been nice having a year with you. Maybe we'll do it again sometime. 

If you want to check out my other posts of Kew through the seasons, you can enjoy another August, October, November (2011), February and May. Also, January at Wakehurst, Kew's sister gardens.

A Firecracker of a Cupcake

It's Guy Fawkes Night! I wore my best sparkly top to work in honour of the day, with its evening promises of joyous, wonderful and magical fireworks going off in all directions.

As well as being Guy Fawkes Night (or Bonfire Night), today is also the birthday of one of my dear friends. All her recent time has been occupied with pulling together a portfolio for a big, impressive professional qualification, which she was submitting today. So, figuring that baking a birthday cake would be the last thing on her mind as she applied the finishing touches last night, I took it upon myself to bake one for her... or rather, a series of wee cupcakes.

But I couldn't overlook the fact that it was also Guy Fawkes as well, so I attempted to give them a fireworky look, with edible glitter and pearly things.

Not being sure what her favourite type of cake was, I just went with chocolate cake. Everyone likes chocolate cake, right? And the recipe (found on BBC Good Food and reproduced below) was dead easy. It was the beautifying of the cupcakes that was the most taxing, as I vainly attempted to make convincing starbursts...

Ingredients:

200g butter

200g plain chocolate (up to 70% cocoa solids)

200g light, soft brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

250g self-raising flour

For icing:

200g plain chocolate

100ml double-cream (I used extra thick double-cream...) 

50g icing sugar 

Method:

Heat the oven to 160C/140C fan and line a muffin tin with cupcake cases. Gently melt the butter, chocolate, sugar and 100ml hot water together in a saucepan, stirring occasionally, then set aside to cool a little while you weigh the other ingredients.

Stir the eggs and vanilla extract into the chocolate mixture. Put the flour into a large mixing bowl, then stir in the chocolate mixture until smooth. Spoon into cases until just over three-quarters full, then set aside for 5 minutes before putting on a low shelf in the overn and baking for 20-22 minutes.

For the icing, melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Once melted, turn off the heat, stir in the cream and sift in the icing sugar. 

Happy Bonfire Night! Hope everyone in the UK has a lovely night, celebrating and enjoying it in whatever way you choose. And I encourage everyone else around the world, wherever you are, to twirl a sparkler or bake some sparkly cakes, in your own personal celebration of early November.

Do the (Easter) Twist

I've been baking again! These little treats are called koulourakia.

This recipe comes a little bit late because they are actually Easter biscuits. Although, if you wanted to be pedantic, they are a Greek recipe and Greek Orthodox Easter isn't until the beginning of May, so they could be made then. Or you could just make them any old time because they're delicious (though I personally like saving special occasion foods for the right special occasion - it keeps them, well, special).

But less talky, more bakey.

You will need:

• 190g butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3/8 cup cream 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 cups plain flour
• white of 1 egg
• sesame seeds
• your most colourful, spring-time-appropriate apron

Cream butter and sugar until smooth. Beat eggs, add to mixture. Beat in cream.

Add baking powder and vanilla essence. Colour co-ordinate your nails with package, if possible. Gradually stir in flour, one cup at a time, until soft.

Knead for 10 minutes on lightly floured surface. Roll into strips 1.5cm x 20cm, then shape and twist.

Place on a greased baking tray.

Brush with egg white and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Before doing so, check the already opened sesame seed packet you photographed in the ingredients pile, realise they're a year out of date, substitute with a fresh pack.

Bake in moderate oven for 10-15 minutes until golden brown. Realise that you should brush the egg white more generously on the next batch so that the nice glossy browned finish comes up more evenly.

Recipe makes about 25-30 biscuits.

Finally, lick the bowl. Share the biscuits with your friends and loved ones.

Love, Sweet Love

I made treats for Valentine's Day! Long-time readers who remember my Valentine's post last year may be surprised by this. But, if you remember, I am not at all opposed to the tradition of Valentine's Day, but rather the commercial and predictable event it has become. I'm a total Romantic, and I love the idea of taking someone by surprise and professing your undying affection. I love the idea of people selecting or making special, personal gifts and sharing their true feelings. But the disheartening sight of desperate, sweating men crammed into shops buying tacky cards and regulation roses does not speak to my Romantic heart.

I also dislike that Valentine's Day seems to stop at people in established couples these days. Love is so much more than that. What about love between friends and family - the relationships that often last longer than romantic ones? What about sharing joy with acquaintances that are neglected in love and friendship? What about smiling at and conversing with strangers? What about finding the beauty in unexpected places and falling back in love with the world?

So, this year, I opted to share the love far and wide. Well, within the walls of my office, anyway... So I baked lots of biscuits for everyone! I adore cherries - they're the fruity love of my life - so they were a natural choice for my sweet treats. Cherry pie is my favourite, and I was considering making more cup pies, as I did for Halloween, but wanted something a little less fiddly and which could go further. So biscuits it was.

Cherry and chocolate biscuits

Ingredients:

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 250g butter
• 2 teaspoon maraschino cherry juice
• 1/2 teaspoon almond essence
• 2 1/4 cups plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup maraschino cherries, drained and chopped (I used black cherries in syrup, as I couldn't find maraschino ones)
• large chocolate chips

• Combine sugar, butter, cherry juice and almond essence. Blend well. 
• Add flour and salt. Mix well. 
• Add cherries. Mix well.
• Shape into 1" balls. Place 2" apart on a biscuit tray covered with greaseproof paper. 
• Bake at 180C for 8-10 minutes. 
• Immediately after baking, top each biscuit with a chocolate chip, pressing down firmly. Remove from tray and cool on wire rack.

Yes, I am dressed in a Valentine-cooking-appropriate red dress with a little heart pattern...

I failed to get a picture of the finished product (apart from the one at the top of this post). They took much longer than the stated time to cook... I think that maybe my oven isn't the greatest though. I bake so infrequently that I'm not aware of its quirks and how I might need to compensate for them.

In the end, the biscuits didn't come out looking quite as appetising as I had hoped and I wasn't overly delighted by the overall result - I feel I would have preferred just munching on cherries! I think dark chocolate would have been a better option than milk chocolate but I couldn't find dark buttons, sadly. But the biscuits went down well at work, and that's the important thing. I =got to share the love and subtly make my point that Valentine's Day shouldn't just be for couples. 

I also got so carried away with my loved-up enthusiasm that I created a Valentine's Day mix, for your listening pleasure. Not much thought went into this, I must confess, I just cast an eye over my itunes library and pulled out a few songs... Or rather, as it ended up, more than a few songs... I opted to throw in friends, love lost, unrequited love, innocent love, less innocent love and "other", just to cover a greater spectrum of experiences and circumstances. And it all kicks off with the worldwide love that inspired this post title, and which I was humming to myself all day today. Click below to enjoy! (And yes, the cover of my compilation is inspired by the fact that my excitement continues to mount over the upcoming Lichtenstein exhibition...)

Valentine's Day from lisamariemac on 8tracks Radio.

Cup Pies! Pumpkin Ones!

I made cup pies! Pumpkin cup pies!

Look at my pumpkin cup pie!

Fans of Pushing Daisies will of course know that a cup pie is a single-serve pie with honey baked into the crust.

Chuck promotes cup pies to Ned in Pushing Daisies (Image source)

I've not baked in I can't remember how long... But this occasion all started with my plan to make pumpkin pie to take in as a Halloween treat for my workmates. I love pumpkin, seriously, love pumpkin. I think that it is intentionally designed to be hard to cut up because otherwise humans would simply overdose on it because it is so good. It's the only vegetable for which I am willing to make all that effort. 

However, I've only had pumpkin pie once or twice in my life, when I have been fed it by an American friend. I decided that it had been too long since I'd indulged in this wonderful treat and that I would break my baking drought with pumpkin pie. As I was going to take it into work, I thought it would make more sense to make small ones that I could distribute easily.

But it was when I found myself short of sugar for the pastry and The Cat suggested I make up the difference with honey that I realised I was actually making cup pies, with honey as the vital ingredient!

Honey - the secret cup pie ingredient.
That's Philip up on the cupboard - he watches over the Cat and I, cheering us up when we're down or stressed.

I used a recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry I got off the BBC website, using about 50g of sugar and a few healthy scoops of honey. You can definitely taste the hint of honey. Unfortunately the pastry stayed quite soft even after a proper, long baking, which isn't so good for individual pies that you want to be able to pick up in your hand. I'm not sure if the result was due to the honey or it's just the usual result of the runny pumpkin filling - perhaps pumpkin pie crusts are always a bit soggy and that doesn't matter when you have a slice on a plate? In any case, I'd experiment with different quantities of honey in the pastry if I tried it again, and I'm not sure if it would be worth trying a slightly different approach such as blind baking first...

Chopping the pumpkin, keeping the seeds aside in case I decide to roast them later.
And I know, no chopping board - bad form.

For the filling, I just pressed on as instructed in the BBC's pumpkin pie recipe, without messing about.

Only for you, oh marvellous pumpkin, would I do all this chopping.
(Note: the wine was an aid, not an ingredient)

The next adjustment came with the baking time. As I was doing lots of small pies, they required less baking time than one big one, but it was still a good 25 minutes.

So much excitement! They actually worked!

Smells so good... (And yes, my lipstick has worn off a little due to sampling the pastry and filling as I cooked...)

Plate of cup pies - although slightly incorrect in Pushing Daisies terms as I used a mince pie tray rather than a muffin one, so they should technically be deeper... but I'm not really complaining.

I found the result really very sweet - maybe I got my measurements slightly wrong, used the wrong kind of pumpkin, or should have made adjustments to the sweet ingredients due to the honey in the crust... Or maybe I'm just not used to treats this sugary. But adding a dollop of cream took the edge off the sweetness, making it almost perfect.

Cup pie?

Becoming Tippi Hedren

Well, you met Vladimir the other day, I've seen lots of fellow bloggers in their fabulous and creative Halloween costumes, and now I think it's time for you to see Vlad in his starring role in my own costume...

The Birds costume completed, with a glimpse of my friend's Psycho costume to the right

My friend insisted on taking a photo of me with a beer can in hand.  All class, me.
I had been drinking wine from a glass at a previous point, I swear!

Yes, indeed, bin bags and wire coat hangers came into play to create Tippi Hedren, aka Melanie Daniels from The Birds.  Vladimir got pride of place on my head, with his beak artfully aimed at my eye.  The remainder of the flock were constructed from bin bags cut into bird outlines, lined with thin wire to keep them in shape, glued together and erected on wire coat hangers.  There were a few trial runs and prototypes before we got this working properly, particularly as the "invisible green" wire we'd bought was too flopsy to support the birds.  But we soldiered on, improvising with re-worked coat hangers.

The birds were then strapped to my back and my dress slipped on over the top so that they emerged from the neck.  My suit wasn't quite the right colour as it should have been a paler green but it's pretty perfect otherwise, don't you think?  I'd lightly tacked some feathers onto the dress before this but I wasn't going to rip any holes or throw any blood on it - not the fabulous 1960s tweed dress suit!

Anyway, putting the dress over the birds gave them a bit more support and discouraged the possibility of them flying too far away from me and into random passers-by...  One was left aside and became a sort of wrist band/bracelet.

Then came the blonde wig.  Surprisingly, this was the bit about my outfit that made me feel the most ridiculous, not the flock of bin bag birds.  But it was a must, considering Hitchcock's "thing" for blondes.  Thankfully, it looked much less absurd when pinned up into a dishevelled French roll than when it was hanging loose.  Vladimir was sewn onto a pale yellow headband and popped onto my head.

Pastel pink lips to match my pastel pink nails, a spot of fake blood on my face and the look was complete.

My partner in costuming crime became a fellow Hitchcock lady, Janet Leigh, aka Marion Crane from Psycho.  Her costume was fabulous but I am sparing her the indignity of having her face splashed all over my blog.  You can see part of her costume though...

Once the paint/blood was dry, we wrapped her in the shower curtain like it was a sleeveless evening dress, with the hooks running down the front like some pretty, arty detailing on a couture frock...  She had a short, sleeveless, beige dress on underneath just to ensure her modesty was preserved.  We then gave her a bit more blood smudged down her arms and a short blonde wig to top off the look.  Genius, even if I do say so myself.

The only problem we encountered with the costumes was that I ended up having to take the birds off my back later on in the evening as it was getting rather crowded indoors and I didn't actually want to take someone's eye out...

Down come the birds...

Vladimir stayed on though, naturally.

Vlad and I party on