gurdymonkey | Entries tagged with recipe

Occasionally an idea takes up space rent-free in my head. A couple of months back, one of my internet friends posted a recipe for a tea cake made with Earl Grey tea. It's a perfectly nice recipe as is, but somewhere in the past couple of Covid-booster-haze, my brain said, "What if you made it with orange juice?"
So I did, just now, realizing it could be an interesting failure.

4oz (8 tbsp.) butter*

6oz (a little over a cup) dried cranberries

4 to 6 oz (1/2 cup to 3/4 cup)** golden caster sugar, though regular cane sugar works fine.

9oz (2 cups) self raising flour (If you can't buy it, add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt to each cup of all purpose flour.)

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (this is baking soda.)

*1/2 teaspoon salt (SKIP if you used salted butter)

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 pint (2 cups) orange juice

Preheat oven to 350F

Combine orange juice, butter and 1/2 cup of sugar in a saucepan on low heat, stir until melted. Add cranberries to the liquid.

Sieve the remaining dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Stir in the juice/fruit mix. **Taste the batter. If the orange juice seems too tangy, spoon a bit more sugar into the batter, taste, repeat as necessary.

Pour into a 1lb loaf tin and bake for 30 - 40 minutes or when a skewer goes in and comes out clean.

First problem: the batter overflowed the pan after about 10 minutes in the oven - fortunately I have an old cookie sheet in the bottom of the oven, so it wasn't that hard to clean up.

Second problem: one of the other tenants came home while it was cooling and there was a door-slam which may have been inadvertent - it's been crazy windy all afternoon. Anyway, when I turned the loaf upside down and removed the pan, the middle of the cake had fallen.

Nice orange flavor, even with the added sugar was not overly sweet. It could be nice with a simple drizzle icing made with orange juice and confectioner's sugar, but I don't think it needs it. Might try baking it in a 9 X 9 brownie pan next time as it would have more space to rise without the overflow problem. Or maybe as muffins. Or maybe I need a bigger loaf pan....

It's kind of a failure, but still very delicious.

2 cups frozen cranberries.

2 apples (I used Granny Smith)

2 tbsb. sugar

Enough sherry to soak the cranberries in, probably about 1 - 1 1/2 cups.

1 cup brown sugar.

Soak cranberries in sherry with granulated sugar stirred into it.

Blind bake your favorite pie crust recipe or a store bought crust, let cool.

Slice apples and line the bottom of the pie crust with them. Strain the sherry out of the cranberries and layer the berries over the apples. Crumble the brown sugar over the top of the fruit.

Look at the sherry/sugar mixture you just drained into a bowl. Look back at the pie. Look at the sherry/sugar mixture. Shrug. Pour it over the top of the pie.*

Bake for 20 minutes in pre-heated 375F oven, then turn down to 350F and give it another 40 minutes. Turn off oven and let cool for 1/2 hour as the oven cools, then take it out and let it cool further.

*Maybe I should not have poured ALL the sherry back into the pie because it made it really wet and it would not come out of the pie dish in one neat slice. However, the sherried cranberry flavor is amazing and this is delicious even if it fell apart. A bit of vanilla ice cream on the side is nice.

Further experimentation is clearly needed. Maybe cooking the berries in the sherry and reducing the liquid before it goes into the pie.... I don't know. I do know there is half a bag of frozen berries and a third of a bottle of sherry left, so maybe we'll try this again at some point.

EDIT: 24 hours later, it *doesn't* fall apart when you try to serve it. Maybe it just needed more time to set. Still yummy.

Sticking this here so I can find it again as it was posted by a Facebook friend who lives and reenacts in the UK. My notes in italics for us Yanks.

4oz (8 tbsp.) butter

6oz (a little over a cup) mixed dried fruit

4oz (1/2 cup) golden caster sugar (Ed says regular granulated sugar will work but the top of the loaf may get slightly crispy - as if that's a bad thing. Since the sugar is going to be added to hot tea, it'll dissolve, which is the important thing.)

9oz (2 cups) self raising flour (If you can't buy it, add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt to each cup of all purpose flour.)

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (this is baking soda.)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon mixed spice (Our equivalent would be similar to the dreaded Pumpkin spice. I figure I'll use ground cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and allspice.)

1/2 pint (2 cups) Earl Grey tea

Preheat oven to gas 4/350 F/ 180C/ 160C fan.

Make the tea and put in a saucepan with the butter and sugar. Stir until melted (do not boil). Add the fruit to the liquid.

Sieve the remaining dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Stir in the tea/fruit mix.

Pour into a 1lb loaf tin and bake for 30 minutes (plus or minus - my (Ed) recipe says 40; I usually check it at 25; 30 seems right on my current oven). It is ready when a skewer goes in and comes out clean.

***********************

I already have a cranberry apple pie planned for Christmas, but this sounds like it would keep well in an airtight container, so I may make this as well, because tea cake.

This sounded sufficiently amazing that I want to try it, so I just sat down and transcribed the recipe instructions. Assuming I can still get what I need tomorrow, I'm gonna make it. This is from Max Miller's "Tasting History," https://youtu.be/FF0HnhuzGak

Hannah Wolley's Pumpion Pye, from "The Gentlewoman's Companion" (1670).

http://womenwriters.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/content.php?level=div&id=woolley_099&document=woolley quotes the original text and contains an additional caudle of egg and white wine, but Miller didn't mention it in his redaction.

Ingredients:

1 sugar pumpkin, peeled, gutted and sliced thin.

2 sharp apples, peeled, cored and sliced thin. (I used Granny Smiths.)

3 eggs

2 handfuls unspecified herbs - fresh sweet marjoram, parsley, rosemary and/or thyme suggested. (I used marjoram and parsley.)

6 tablespoons butter - these will be used in three 2 tbsp. stages, please read ahead for where and when.

1/3 cup raisins (I used golden raisins because I had them.)

1/3 cup currants

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup sack or sherry (EDIT: cooking sherry has salt added, buy a cheap bottle of drinking sherry instead, particularly if you're watching your sodium intake. I found a brand called Fairbanks, which is produced by Gallo. )

1 pie crust. (I used a brand name refrigerated crust.)

Instructions based on Mr. Miller's redaction and my observations during the process:

PREP - THE PART NO ONE EVER PUTS IN THE DAMN RECIPE: You're not a cooking show host with a crew of lackeys to do your prep. Just dealing with the pumpkin took me around 40 minutes, so I've rearranged the order of action here just so you don't have the oven preheating for over an hour or apples turning brown for no good reason.

1. Make pie crust and lay it in your pie dish. I used a ready made refrigerated crust, following the instructions on the package, but if you have a favorite scratch crust recipe, go for it. Pre-baking is not necessary per Mr. Miller's video, but that's up to you.

2. Prep your fresh herbs. Cooking novices, if you hold the stems and pull against the grain, the leaves come right off, nice and neat. Chop with a knife or choppy kitchen gadget of your choice and set them aside.

3. Measure sugar, currants and raisins into a small bowl, so they're ready to go when the time comes. Open that bottle of sherry and measure that out into cup. You're not going to want to be playing around with a corkscrew at the last minute.

4. Peel, gut and slice pumpkin thinly. A potato peeler works fine for peeling. Raw pumpkin is hard to cut, even with a sharp knife or cleaver. TAKE YOUR TIME AND KEEP YOUR FINGERS. Also, if you still have fiber clinging to one side of your slices, you can trim it with your peeler. You can save the seeds to toast if you want.

5. Peel, core and slice apples thinly and line the bottom of the pie dish with them.

NOW preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Beat eggs in a bowl and add chopped herbs.

Melt 2 tbsp. butter in a large skillet.

Dip pumpkin slices in egg mixture - don't coat too thickly - and add to skillet. Cook them 8-10 minutes, stirring as needed. You will probably need to do this in several batches depending on how much room you have in said skillet. I kept it on medium heat, stirring and moving cooked pumpkin with tongs to a mixing bowl and adding new pieces to the skillet as I made room. If you use tongs it takes a bit longer, but you can shake off the inevitable cooked egg clumps which you don't need in your pie filling. Unused egg herb mixture can go in the fridge and flavor an omelette later. Should be good for at least 24 hours.

Transfer cooked pumpkin to bowl, add 2 tbsp. butter (which should be nice and soft by now) as well as the raisins, currants, sugar, and sherry. Mix thoroughly, then pour into the pie dish over the apple layer.

Bake at 425 degrees F for first 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 375 degrees F and bake for another 40-50 minutes. (My oven heats accurately and evenly and 40 minutes was enough. YMMV.)

Remove from oven, slice last 2 tbsp. butter over the top and let cool.

It smells lovely, though the usual "pie spice" component is missing. Can I hold out until Thanksgiving though?

UPDATED: Thanksgiving, 11/26/2020.

The moment you pie fiends have been waiting for:

Hannah Woolley's Pumpion Pie does not taste like any pumpkin pie you've ever had. If you're expecting pumpkin spice, it's not here.

The pumpkin tastes like, well, pumpkin. Sweet, squashy, and you're getting it in soft chunks, not in a custard. It is balanced beautifully by the apple, raisins and currants, and I'm getting an interesting undertone from the sherry. The result is delicious, not overly sweet, and certainly not gooey. Although the recipe didn't say so, I wonder what soaking the raisins and currants in the sherry might do.

The store bought pie crust did fine, but fell apart when I tried to lift the first slice out. Pre-baking might improve that, but it's all right without.

I am eating it plain and at room temperature, but if you like a la mode with vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream, it would work well with that. I'm also thinking this would be excellent for breakfast. Which is good because I'm all alone with a whole pie!

Definitely a winner, but labor intensive as described above. If you're willing to commit an afternoon to making it, it's totally worth it.

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