Cake not pie

I have had a jar and a half of fruit mince maturing at the back of my kitchen cupboard for a very, very long time. For a few years I made mince pise each Christmas - and they were tasty.  But they were very fiddly, and I lost enthusiasm around about 2012.  In particular, handling short, buttery pastry in the heat of an Australian summer is not much fun.

So there the mince lurked, in the darkness.

In response to the persistent pleas of my space-loving housemate to actually use some of the many things in the cupboard, I decided to sort out that mince. And discovered it is actually not that easy to find a non-pie recipe for fruit-mince.

Eventually I found this blog entry for a Fruit Mince Crumble Cake. Even though the blogger didn't have a great result with her cake, it looked pretty appealing to me. The cake was excellent and very well received by my family on a cold autumn evening.

Fruit Mince Crumble Cake

(from Better Homes and Gardens - December 2008)

Crumble

1 cup spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
125g unsalted butter, cold

Cake

1 1/2 cups spelt flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
160g unsalted butter, cold
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
400g jar fruit mince
100g sweetened dried cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a 24cm round springform cake tin and line base with baking paper.
2. To make crumble, combine flour, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg into a bowl. Using your fingers, rub butter into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Set aside.
3. Combine flour, baking powder and sugar in a large bowl. Rub butter into this mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Lightly beat the eggs in a small bowl and mix with the milk. Add to the flour mixture and and stir until combined. Spoon mixture into prepared tin and smooth out to make an even layer.
4. Spread fruit mince over the cake batter - the layer does not b=have to be even, but make sure that most of the batter is covered by the mince. Sprinkle cranberries over the mince and top all of this with the crumble mix.
5. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of cake. Stand tin on a wire rack for about 15 minutes before removing from the tin and cooling completely on the rack.

This cake is best served warm, and it is excellent with custard.
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Chipotle Maple Barbeque Sauce

I started planning tonight's dinner with a Mexican cookbook open in front of me - in the end the final result came from a midpoint between Mexico and Canada.  And it was amazingly tasty.

I had the remains of a can of chipotle chillies in the freezer and a dining partner who was very keen on eating them.  None of the recipes in my Mexican cookbook inspired me today so I jumped into Google and came across this recipe for Chipotle-Maple Barbecue Chicken.

Didn't have any chicken pieces but I had a nice fillet of pork just waiting to be enjoyed.  I took my inspiration very much from the recipe and tweaked it a little to suit my audience.

I had the time to brine the pork - and having never done this before I seized the moment.  I put about 1/8 cup of salt and 1/8 cup caster sugar in 500L of cold water and stirred it all until the solids dissolved.  Plonked the pork in the jug of brine and left it on the bench for about an hour.  Patted it dry and then into a hot frying pan, smeared with a bit of the sauce.  I put a little more of the sauce on the pork as it was cooking - enough to caramelise a little.  Went the pork was ready, I let it rest a little then sliced it and poured over a couple of generous spoonfuls of the sauce.

It was definitely worth it - the meat was tender and juicy.  My companion claimed he could taste the sugar from the brine in the pork - I didn't get that at all, just tasty moist meat.

As for the sauce, this is what I did: I put about 1/3 cup tinned chipotle chillies in a blender with four smashed garlic cloves, 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce, about 1/2 cup maple flavoured syrup, 4 tbsp. white wine vinegar and a tup of tomato paste.  Whizzed it all up and then put it in a saucepan with about 50g butter and a tin of crushed tomatoes.

I let it simmer for a while to reduce a little and added a bit of smoked paprika to increase the smokiness.  The kitchen smelt wonderful.

I now have a couple of jars of wonderful smoky-sweet tangy sauce and a well fed and happy husband who is insisting on having chipotles in the house, all the time, under every circumstance.

Wearable muslin: Vogue 7910

I have a need for black clothes - not my usual preference, but one triggered by an upcoming roller derby tournament.  I'm officiating at The Bont Invitational and I'm so looking forward to it.  My first tournament, several international teams, and my team is going too - Canberra Roller Derby League.  The organisers want to do it properly and so they are asking the officials to really get our uniforms sorted. So, black clothes for me.  I have the shirts - I now need the bottom halves. 

With my resolution to actually use my big fancy sewing machine, I decided that these summer holidays were a great opportunity to make some skirts to wear at the tournament.  Also, to use these as test-runs for future skirt sewing - the skirts would be wearable muslins.  So I went on a pre-Christmas shopping spree for funereal fabric and patterns, and now I have three types of black fabric and two new skirt patterns. 

First cab off the rank: Vogue 7910, view B.  It is the one on the left - with the curved panels on the sides.  I am using a fabric called Carmen Cupro Touch, from Lincraft.  It is a medium weight with a bit of drape and a bit of texture in the weave.  Its a pleasure to sew, but it frays like the devil.

So what did I learn?  That my machine has lots of lovely feet, and lots of lovely stitches.  That the on-board help is, surprisingly, rather good.  That the sound of my machine adjusting tension as it travels over seams makes me happy every time I hear it.  That I had better keep using so that I can really learn how to get the best out of it - I had some issues with the blind hem stitch and with topstitching - all due to newbie-ism.

The pattern is good, I really like the smooth centre front panel.  I didn't get the side panels to sit smoothly - there is puckering at the top of the curve.  That area really needs special care and slow sewing.  The skirt is super comfortable and doesn't ride up, blow up or otherwise misbehave.

Modifications: size ZZ with a 10mm taper at the waist of each side piece.  Back hem about 60mm lower than front hem - length mid-knee.

Future enhancements:

• Rework the sides to create a straight side seam.  Rather like view C (shown in black) but without the side pockets. 
• Add decorative top stitching on the seams.
• Use the pattern as the top layer of a skirt with flounce.
• Make the version with side panels in a heavyweight knit - something like the Knitwit Monaco.
• Make the flared version A (in white) in a lightweight, drapey woven fabric.
• Add a lining (or wear a slip) to protect my skin from the edges of the hems and the seams.
• Use a light coloured bobbin thread when basting black fabrics - unpicking black stitches from a textured black fabric - really not fun.

What am I letting myself in for?

One of my friends is a recent convert to crochet - which I wish to enable and encourage, naturally.  It is her birthday and we are celebrating this weekend with casual drinks at a pub.  Now she and I don't usually do presents, but I wanted to give her something small as a token of appreciation - she has been supportive in this last, nasty few months.

Given my recent success with dyeing yarn for a present, my thoughts headed down that track.  I know my friend's taste in colours but didn't want to pigeon-hole her - maybe she would like to crochet reds or oranges, or purples even?  So I trotted off to the hardware and snaffled a paint colour chart, thinking to give her a properly interactive pressie.

I chopped that colour chart up into many little pieces and found a nice little baggie for presentation. Attached was a tag on which I wrote: choose three to four colours, tell me what weight of yarn you would like and I will custom dye you a couple of skeins.  Now it may have been an odd way to offer someone yarn, but there was a good bit of amusement associated with the present.

Now she will choose some colours and I will handpaint her some yarn.  This will be an adventure for me - I have never actually handpainted yarn before.  Much fun to be had with creative challenges - just jump in the deep end.

Purples and reds and pinks

I'm really pleased with the results of my most recent yarn play.  The two purples and the reddish-pink of the Desert Pea have combined to give a great set of red-purple-pinks.  There are some dominant red bits, some dominant purple bits - and no white at all.  Really happy.

One of the features of this approach was that the first round produced a fairly even, consistent colour.  A good technique to use to create a base for future dye jobs.

And my swap partner loved the yarn - I hope that I get to see what she makes with it.

Sour Cherry Crumble Muffins

And the muffins were excellent!  The recipe is worth recording for posterity.

Crumble Ingredients

1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp. white spelt flour
2tbsp. cold butter

Muffin Ingredients

1 3/4 cups white spelt flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg (be generous!)
1/3 cup white sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup bottled Morello cherries, drained and coarsely chopped

Method

For the topping: Mix together the sugar and flour in a small bowl.  Rub the butter in with your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs.

For the muffins: Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.  Combine the egg, ilk and oil in a jug and add to the dry ingredients, stirring until just mixed.  Fold in the cherries.

Spoon the mixture into greased or lined patty or muffin pans, leaving room for the muffins to rise.  Sprinkle the crumb topping over the muffins and bake for 20 - 25 minutes at 180 degrees until golden.  Leave in the pan for about five minutes and then cool fully on wire racks.

These muffins are really good warm.  Really, really good.

The recipe is a modified version of the Sour Cherry Muffins with Crumb Topping from The Muffin Book by Fog City Press

Playing with purples

Having lost my voice, I'm home from work and reaching the aggressively bored stage of my minor illness.  Don't want to tidy the house, so I dug out some yarn and now I'm trying to dye something for my Guild Christmas swap partner.

Here's the process:

1. Skeined up three balls of Shepherd Baby Merino in cream (3x 165m: 395m). 
2. Soaked them all briefly in cold water and dunked them in the bottom of the slow cooker. 
3. Filled it up to about half full with cold water then added approx. 50mL of 10% Cyclamin.
4. Turned it on and filled it up with water which had just come off the boil.  Now simmering...

The dye is slowly exhausting into the yarn - I usually start with hot water so this feels very sloooow.  The colour is pretty consistent, just a little mottling.

Next step:

1. With water still hot, squirt in 20 mL of 10% Sarsparilla and 20 mL of 10% Desert Pea.  Some under, some at edges, some on top of the yarn.  Try to avoid stripes!
2. Quick look - not nearly enough red!  Another 20 mL of Desert Pea.  Generously squirted throughout, then left to sit and simmer.

And now the colour is looking great!  Burnt myself in the process of checking and I also now have purple hands with two red stripes.  Not very patient.

But I need to be patient and let it sit at heat for a bit.  I'll walk away, leave it on the heat for half an hour and then I can take the yarn out for the colour-admiration phase.  Followed by the cranky-detangling phase.

Making muffins will distract me effectively I think.  Sour Cherry Crumble muffins.