There was a day a couple weeks ago where it was absolutely pouring out and it was a super-depressing, totally un-summery day.
So I went grocery shopping and found that fresh figs were on sale, as well as some reasonably local strawberries. So of course I bought a whole bunch.
And then I had to figure out what to do with all this gorgeous fruit.
But I had some puff pastry and some good ol’ custard-in-a-can. So let’s make a tart — or two!
So I sliced up all the figs and strawberries, nice and thin, about 1/4″ thick.
And then I drooled a little bit, because look at all that awesomeness.
I’ve never baked with canned custard before, so I wasn’t sure if it would solidify after cooking. Just to be on the safe side, I decided to beat one whole egg into the custard for insurance.
I also spilled a few drops of Grand Marnier orange liqueur in there and it tasted amazing already.
I created a quick glaze by mixing some honey with some egg white I had sitting in the fridge.
Then I preheated the oven to 375°F and rolled out my two sheets of pastry onto parchment paper.
I added a few spoonfuls of my custard mix and smoothed it out with the back of a spoon. Not too much – you don’t want it spilling everywhere once it heats up.
Then I laid out the fruit. This one was all fig.
This one I alternated fig and strawberry.
Then I took a silicone brush and smoothed the egg white glaze over the fruit. I shoved those in the oven, one at a time, for about 25 minutes. Keep an eye on them to make sure the glaze and the custard aren’t burning.
Let those puppies cool almost completely before cutting them up.
I still had some glaze and strawberries and custard left, and there was a cup of that delightful rhubarb curd I made earlier. What should I do?
I decided to whip together a wee bit of shortbread (butter, sugar, flour), which I pressed into a pan and baked at 375°F for 15 minutes.
Then I mixed that gorgeous curd into the custard I had left over.
Poured it into the pan on top of the shortbread.
Then lined it with the strawberry slices.
Glazed it with what was leftover.
And then I baked it for about half an hour. It’s kind of like a rudimentary flan. It was so tasty!
I had to fill in (on rather short notice) for one of the members of my Sweet Treats group at work, and so this is what I came up with. I LOVE (love, love, love) meringues. Always have. In fact I think they’re the first thing I ever baked. And so every time I make something with egg yolks I take advantage of the extra whites and whip up a batch. The Pie isn’t a huge fan of the crispy, chewy, sugary goodness, but that hasn’t stopped me yet. I’ve even branched out and made different varieties of chocolate meringue, one of which I posted about here. But I keep seeing fruity versions, so I thought I’d give that a go. Most of the recipes call for food colouring and raspberry or strawberry extract, neither of which are particularly yummy to me. I mean, I understand why you would use them in this case — the fluffy egg whites are pretty delicate and would collapse if you put too much heavy stuff into the mix.
But I think we can give this a bit of a go, with some real fruit. We just have to be very careful.
What you need is some egg whites, at room temperature. I have some pasteurized egg whites that came in a carton which has been sitting in my freezer since Cait and Jul were here, so I might as well use that. Then you need some cream of tartar, which is your stiffening agent. And some sugar. For sweetness. Obviously. You can use any sweetener you like, but I prefer the ease of good old regular sugar.
And you need some fruit. I’m going to use about a cup and a half of frozen raspberries here, which I thawed, and I’m going to gently stew them for a little bit with 1 teaspoon corn starch. To prevent lumps of corn starch forming, mix the spoonful of starch with a small amount of the raspberry juice first, to form a slurry (this technique works really well when adding thickener to gravies, too). I added in a tablespoon or so of sugar, just to get rid of the bite of the raspberry acid.
Then I’m going to strain them (and by that I mean shove the mess through a sieve with a spoon), and come out with a nice little coulis. Let that cool for a bit.
Now you can start your meringues. Preheat your oven to 250°F and line some baking sheets with parchment paper.
The regular proportions I use come from The Joy of Cooking, and involve 4 egg whites, 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon vanilla (which I made from rum!) and 1 cup sugar. You can multiply or divide this recipe however you wish. In my carton o’ egg whites the label says there is the equivalent of 8 egg whites, so I’m going with that proportion, which is a double batch.
Of course, I didn’t learn until after I’d put it all together that pasteurized egg whites (such as those that come in a carton) do not lend themselves well to making meringue. So I had to start all over again.
SO very much not what I was aiming for.
So you have your room temperature egg whites, and you chuck them in the bowl of a mixer with your cream of tartar and your rum/vanilla, and you beat the crap out of it with your whisk-y thing. When you’ve got nice foamy peaks, you can start adding your sugar in, a little bit at a time. Keep beating until you have nice firm peaks.
That’s more like it!
These peaks not only hold their own weight, but they can support the weight of the heavy metal whisk as well!
Once the egg whites form stiff peaks, you can gently fold in your coulis.
I spooned the meringue stuff onto the baking sheets in decent cookie-sized heaps, and ended up with 42 of them. Bake them for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (maybe a bit longer if they’re still squishy on the bottom, and make sure to rotate your sheets if you’ve got them on two levels), and let them cool inside the oven after you’ve turned it off. If you cool them too quickly they’ll collapse. Store them in an airtight container and make sure to eat them all within a few days of baking.
Greetings from inside the oven …
These are strongly reminiscent of those fruit-flavoured hard candies that they hand out in restaurants, that you suck on for a while and then you chew and the inside is all squishy and sticks together. That’s what biting on these is like. Taste is very similar, too.
I got this recipe from Inquiring Chef, who in turn modified it from Bakerella. I think it’s awesome. Challenge accepted.
Inquiring Chef came up with four batches of different flavours: blueberry, raspberry, lemon, and mint. She tried kiwi but apparently it didn’t gel, so I left my kiwi purée in the freezer for the time being. I did whip out my frozen fruit from Costco and came up with six different flavours: blueberry, mixed berry (raspberry, blackberry, blueberry), strawberry, mango, and raspberry. I planned to turn whatever was left into a mélange and call that one “fruit salad”. I left those to defrost in the sun while I made The Un-Cola.
You only need 3 tablespoons of purée per flavour, but I wasn’t sure how much would be left over after I finished straining out the seeds and skins, so I kind of eyeballed it.
So, in a food processor, purée those fruits all up.
Strain them to remove the seeds and skins and whatever else is in there.
Push the stuff against the sides of the strainer with a spoon to get ’em to go. Some are easier than others.
Some are downright lurid.
Now we’re ready to go. Five flavours here.
And my “fruit salad” here.
The recipe below will give you two flavours. I obviously multiplied it by three to match my six flavours.
Grease or spray 2 5″x 6″ pans for the gelatinizing of them there gum drops. I used 8″ pie plates and cake tins, because that was what I had on hand.
So. Plop 3 tablespoons purée of one flavour into the bottom of one large heat-proof bowl, and then another 3 tablespoons of another flavour into another.
In a large pot, sprinkle 4 tablespoons unflavoured gelatin (sorry, this isn’t a vegetarian recipe) over 1 cup cold water. Leave that to soften for 5 minutes.
Pour 1 1/2 cups boiling water over the gelatin and stir to dissolve.
Pour in 4 cups sugar and bring that to a boil over medium heat. You will need to stir this constantly so it doesn’t boil over. And you will need to do this for 25 minutes straight. No, you can’t run to change the radio station or answer the phone. I managed to do this while talking on Skype with my parents, but they’re an indulgent sort and Skype is hands-free after all. They only stuck around for one batch of the stuff, though. I had to do that three times.
Pour half the boiling sugar-gelatin foam over the purée in one bowl and the rest into the other. Working quickly, stir to mix the purée completely into the sugar syrup.
Pour the mixtures into the sprayed pans.
Shove those suckers in the refrigerator overnight (or up to 2 days). See how nice and firm that is?
Pour about a cup of sugar onto a baking sheet. Then run a knife around the edges of the nice firm gelatin and gently release it from the pan.
This will take a bit of persuasion, and I found a metal spatula to be very handy here. Don’t worry about damaging the gelatin — it’s pretty resilient.
Place it in the sugar. When I’d done this I almost felt like I’d done some sort of organ transplant, and this was the one waiting for donation. It looks like a lung or something …
Then flip it to coat both sides — this will keep things from getting super sticky. You’ll get sticky enough as it is.
Put the gelatin on a cutting board and use a long knife to cut strips from it.
I then used scissors to cut the strips into 3/4″ cubes, or close enough approximates. You can use a knife for this if you want to get straighter lines, but seeing as I was making squares out of something that was originally a circle, I wasn’t that concerned. Plus as things get stickier, scissors are way easier.
Cut the strips into the sugar.
Then get in there with your hands and toss them to coat.
A just-tossed gum drop, up close and personal:
Transfer the finished gumdrops to parchment paper and leave, at room temperature, for 2 days to crystallize and get all good. This is my dining room table, completely covered in candy.
Then give them all away — or save a few for yourself! It always amazes me how simple candy always turns out to be — and that’s probably why it’s so good!
You can see more pictures of the gum drop adventure on my Flickr page.
Clockwise from top left: Fruit Salad, Raspberry, Mixed Berry, Blueberry, Mango, Strawberry
In the last week of August I went to Toronto for the Molson Canadian World Hockey Summit, which was incredibly exciting for me, to be able to rub elbows with all the people I hope to know personally once I’ve finished my doctorate.
I was also able to meet the Pie in town on two nights and catch some Blue Jays games. This is Jose Bautista. He’s not much to look at but he got a home run on one night.
I stayed with my best friend Chel and her lovely new husband Invis right downtown. Talk about making the most out of a small space! Here is their tiny kitchen, with Invis filling up most of it. Chel had the clever idea of using one of her favourite coat hangers (because she couldn’t find another place for it) to hang up her pots and pans. I think it’s genius.
One night they were kind enough to allow me to cook them dinner, and we decided, since it was hot and humid in the Big Smoke, to keep things on the simple side. We settled on a chicken rosé sauce on pasta followed by vanilla ice cream with strawberry and red currant fruit sauce.
We decided to feature basil in the recipe because Chel has been keeping a lush little plant going for some time.Chop up a few boneless skinless chicken breasts, as well as a small onion, some mushrooms, and a red pepper or two. And don’t forget lots and lots of fresh basil.
Chuck the onion in a pot with some olive oil and sauté until translucent.Season your chicken breasts and plop them in as well. Stir it around until the chicken is cooked through.Add in your basil and let that aroma fill the space as it heats up.Then drop in your vegetables and let them cook for a wee spell.Now you can pour in a jar of your favourite pasta or other tomato sauce.Add in some whipping cream as well, about 250mL. Let the whole thing simmer.If you find it’s too watery you can add in a can of tomato paste to thicken it up.Serve over your pasta of choice and you’ve got a lovely meal.Now while that is simmering you can whip up your dessert fruit sauce. We found some lovely fresh red currants in the grocery store so I added them, some cut up strawberries, a bit of sugar, and some juice to the pot and set it to boil.Once you have simmered it for a while, remove it from the heat and let it cool while you eat your dinner. Pour it over ice cream and you’re all set.
Okay enough of that. People call food writing food porn, and just last week on Freshly Pressed there was a blog about how sensual fruit salad is, so I just put two and two together. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.
I am a total fruit hound. It’s ridiculous how often I make myself sick over-eating when it comes to fruit. The Pie just shakes his head at me and tells me I am a grown-up and should know better. Then he goes and gets the Rolaids for me.
Fruit salad is the perfect summer dessert, especially after a dinner party where you have all stuffed yourselves silly. This one I made for just such a party. I find it’s good to make fruit salads the day before and leave them overnight in the fridge to let all the flavours mingle and get to know each other.
I left my regular camera in my in-laws’ truck, and so had to make do with my old one for this, which, despite weirdly exposing everything and turning every second photo a vivid purple, worked out rather well.
Some local strawberries, which I inexpertly hulled:
Some leftover plums from the macaroon incident, which I pitted and quartered:
And a can each of mandarin orange segments and freestone peaches:
I set everything up in a mis en place so I could figure out how I was going to layer this sucker. A fruit salad should be as pretty to look at as it is tasty to eat.
Into a pretty crystal bowl went all the watermelon, pineapple, peaches, oranges, and plums. I added the juice from the pineapple as well. Don’t be afraid to mix it up with your hands. It goes with the whole sensual thing. Plus your hands don’t tend to damage the more delicate fruits like metal spoons do.
Then around the outside I layered the kiwi, about two slices wide. The strawberries I piled in the centre of the ring.
This final step is up to you, but I like to add about 2 ounces of a clear spirit, like vodka, to the mix, just to enhance the fruit flavours. Today I had tequila, so I made do with that. Cover it with plastic wrap and chuck it in the fridge overnight.Sensual? Maybe. Tasty? For sure.
On a gorgeous Saturday morning we made a trip to Bell Island.
We drove to Portugal Cove-St. Phillip’s, about twenty minutes north of St. John’s, and waited next to a waterfall for the ferry to take us away.
A trip on the ferry costs nearly nothing, and you pay the fare only once to get on and off the island. The ride there was pretty awesome, and we all took lots of pictures.The ferry itself was super-ghetto, which made it also cool.
Bell Island was settled by farmers in the early 1700s. Iron was discovered there in the late 1800s, which made Bell Island into a thriving mining community. The mine closed in 1966, however, and since then the population, once around 12,000, has declined to less than 4,000. Most Bell Islanders live in the incorporated town of Wabana, but a few live in the smaller towns of Lance Cove and Freshwater. The mine is open to tourists, but unfortunately we were about two weeks too early to get a tour.
Fun fact for you. Bell Island was one of the only places in North America to see enemy action during WWII. A pier where 80,000 tonnes of iron ore was stored in preparation for shipping was torpedoed by the German u-boats in 1942. Supposedly at low tide you can see the wrecks of the four ships that were sunk in that battle, and there stands a memorial for the 69 men who died in the conflict.
Unfortunately we got lost (hard to do on such a small island, but we managed) and we didn’t make it to that memorial.
We did, however, find a beach.
There was a duck who had it in for me. Cait chased it away with her scary red boots.And a boat that probably didn’t float.
And a seagull.
On an old wharf with missing pieces and a warning sign.And some rocks, which the Pie threw into the ocean (surprise, surprise).
And an inukshuk, which I built.
Cait found a rock with a happy face on it, so we gave the statue some expression.
We drove around a bit more, and then we found the lighthouse, which made the entire day worth our while. This shot reminds me of an Alex Colville painting.
There were warning signs everywhere about unstable coast line, which we ignored, and were glad we did. Well all of us except the Pie, who worries about such things.
The lighthouse sat on the edge of an enormous cliff.
Below it were some utterly fantastic land forms.
This huge broken piece had all sorts of little caves underneath it and the water was so blue.It reminded me of some kind of pirate meeting place.I crawled over some strawberries to get some of the photos. The ants living there didn’t like it very much and I was soon covered with the little buggers.
This mini staircase was at the edge of the parking lot. You could pick it apart with your hands, which made me a little glad I hadn’t gone right to the edge of the cliffs.
I think this is a pitcher plant.Behind the lighthouse it looked like the horizon stretched off and ended abruptly, and it actually did. You can see in this photo, where the grass ends is just empty air. The cliff drop-off is staggering. You really do get the impression that you are at the end of the world. Most of Newfoundland is like that.
We ate lunch at Dick’s, a family restaurant celebrating its 60th year in operation. I enjoyed my sandwich. It had a nice view. The restaurant, not the sandwich.The ferry back was slightly newer, and we passed the old on on the way. And a sailboat.
I happen to own, because I am that awesome, an æbleskiver pan.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” you ask.
Æbleskiver. It’s a Danish treat using apple slices (it’s Danish for ‘apple slices’). They’re like small spherical pancakes/popovers with stuff in them. It’s a food traditionally served with glogg during Advent. You might be reminded of the commercial knock-off, Pancake Puffs, which have recently come on the market. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTIONS!
I have the pan because my mother gave it to me. She found it at a second-hand store. Hers came from a relative. We use ours to make the family recipe for Molasses Gems (don’t worry, I’ll give you the how-to for those later).
Anyway, I figured I might as well experiment and see if I could put the pan to its intended use.
Peel two apples and chop them into 1/2″ pieces. I found this made me end up with quite a bit of extra apple, but better to be safe than sorry and you can always serve it on the side.
Your æbleskiver pan is cast iron, and will take a little while to heat up thoroughly. Put it on the burner at medium high heat and leave it while you do other stuff. Just remember that the handle will also get very hot, so be careful. We have these handy silicone sleeves we slip onto our metal handles. You can pick them up pretty much anywhere.
In another pan, sauté the apples in two tablespoons butter until softened but still firm. Sprinkle them with cinnamon and set aside.
In a clean bowl, whip two egg whites until soft peaks form and set aside. The eggs will fluff up the best if you bring them to room temperature first. To do this I put my eggs in a bowl of warm water before separating them.
In another bowl, whisk together your two egg yolks and one tablespoon sugar until creamy.
In yet another bowl, sift together two cups flour with one teaspoon baking powder. Slowly add this, alternating with one and one-half cups buttermilk, to the yolk mixture.
Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.
Test your æbleskiver pan to see if it’s hot enough. Butter should sizzle on its surface. Reduce the heat to medium and drop about one-eighth of a teaspoon butter into each little well to grease. Use a pastry brush to cover all the sides of the well.
Spoon enough batter into each well to fill it halfway. Drop in an apple piece and press it down bit. Be careful not to burn yourself.
Fill the wells to the top.
Allow to cook until the edges of æbleskiver turn brown and begin to pull away from the sides of the pan.
Run a metal or wooden knitting needle (traditional method), skewer, or fork around the edges to loosen the æbleskiver and flip it over inside the well.
It takes a little bit of practice to do this without getting batter everywhere. By the end of it, though, I had it down. Allow to cook through until you can give it a poke and nothing comes out stuck to your skewer.
Remove the æbleskiver to a plate and sprinkle with (or roll in) icing sugar or dip in jam to serve. Maybe try maple syrup. Or home-made fruit sauce. You can of course experiment as well with what goes in the æbleskiver – try other forms of fruit, like mango or strawberry or perhaps something savoury like a nice hard cheese. Here we have it with whipped cream, lemon curd, strawberry jam, and leftover apples.
Make sure to repeat the buttering process each time you put batter into the wells of the pan. You can keep the cooked æbleskiver warm on an oven-safe plate in the oven at 250°F while you’re making the other batches.
This recipe makes about 28 æbleskiver, which is four batches in my 7-well pan.
I spent 1990-1995 living on a relatively high security naval base in British Columbia. As a shy girl with an overactive imagination, living in the relative isolation of that place was the best time of my life, despite the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War followed by a subsequent vicious and terrifying CUPE strike. I went back to the base in February of 2002, and it just wasn’t the same. For one thing, there were actual guards at the front gate now, with really big guns. As an adult I was subject to quite a bit more scrutiny than I had been as a child. But it was fantastic to visit the place where I used to have so much fun.
My front yard was twenty metres from the ocean and a rocky beach. Helicopters would land in the field behind my house. The admiral would let me pick roses from his garden. Destroyers, frigates, and minesweepers would signal me in pseudo-morse code when I waved (well they would if my dad or someone I knew was on them). Frogmen would magically appear next to me on the beach, having emerged from the ocean. Things got exciting when nuclear submarines came to visit. There were enormous cliffs to climb and fantastic old ruins to hide in. And there were wild apple trees, cherry trees, and a blackberry bush the length of a football field.
It wasn’t uncommon to pass by this particular bush on any given day in the summer and find it full of not only bees and wasps but engineers, sailors, police officers, and anyone else who happened to be passing by and wanted a snack.
We ate a lot of blackberries in those summers.
My mother would stew the blackberries with a bit of water or juice, a spoonful or two of sugar, and a little dab of corn starch to thicken it. We would eat this stuff on ice cream, cake, pie, pancakes, waffles … you name it. It’s a multi-purpose sauce and can turn any dessert into an elegant treat in a flash.
Blackberries are obviously my favourite ingredient, but you can use any other kind of berry you want. Living in Newfoundland I have discovered that partridge berries make a nice tart sauce. Raspberries, blueberries, and halved strawberries work well. Frozen berries work very well in this, as you don’t have to work on breaking them down as they cook. I will try to quantify the amounts for you here. If you’re cooking for a dinner party, make the full recipe below, but you can halve (or double) this recipe easily.
Take 2 cups fresh or frozen berries and bung them in a small pot. I used blueberries this time. Add in 1/2 cup of water or juice (I like to use cranberry juice to boost the flavour) and 1/4 cup of sugar. You’ll need a little extra liquid if you are using fresh berries.
Heat on medium, stirring often, until all the berries are defrosted and broken up.
Suspend one tablespoon corn starch in three tablespoons water or juice and pop that in as well.
Bring to a boil, stirring frequently.
Remove from the heat and drizzle over the food of your choice.
Angel food is one of my favourite cakes, always has been, even since I was a child. My mother would rarely make it because without a stand mixer it’s kind of a pain in the ass. With my lovely Kitchenaid this whole shebang is a breeze.
This is one recipe where I follow the rules to the letter. You really can’t mess with the science of this cake. Angel food is basically an enormous meringue with flour and sugar suspended in it, so you have to be pretty rigid with how you make it. You also absolutely NEED a tube pan or bundt pan to make angel food cake. The batter won’t cook evenly without that empty space in the middle. Trust me, I’ve tried it. Bad things happen. Tube pans are generally better to use than bundt pans simply because the tube on the pan is generally taller than the rest of the pan to allow you to invert it, or the pan comes with legs on the top that let you do the same thing.
I got this recipe a few years ago from Cooking for Engineers, and I think it’s fantastic. It’s a good way to fancy up an easy cake. The only change I made to this recipe was to double the amount of stewed strawberries, as the last time I made it I didn’t feel like I had enough.
Preheat your oven to 375°F.
In a bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups cake flour or all purpose flour and 1/3 cup granulated sugar. Then sift that stuff together with a sifter. I like the handheld squeezy sifters because they make my life easier and they’re fun. You want to sift your solids a couple times to make sure the sugar and flour are fully incorporated.
Now you need the whites of 12 eggs (about 1 1/2 cups). You can either separate them yourself or buy them in a carton – the choice is yours. Just make sure that if you separate them yourself you don’t get any yolks mixed in with the whites – whites don’t get all that fluffy when there is fat mixed in. We’ll figure out something to do with the yolks another time, but until then you can wrap them tightly and put them in the freezer. Bring the whites to room temperature. You can do this quickly by putting the bowl of whites inside another bowl of warm water. Room temperature whites will make a bigger foam than cold whites. FACT.
Put your whites in your mixer and let ‘er rip. When the whites begin to look frothy, add in 1/4 tsp salt and 1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar.
When the whites have formed soft peaks, whisk in 1 1/2 tsp vanilla and then whisk in 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar, a little bit at a time.
Soft peaked meringue
When the whites have formed stiff peaks (ones that don’t droop), stop yer mixin’ and take the bowl out the mixer.
Stiff peaked meringue
Sift the flour mixture onto a thin layer on top of the whites, a bit at a time, and fold in gently with a wide spatula. Be very gentle so you don’t disturb the millions of little bubbles. Keep adding layers of flour until you’re out of stuff to sift, and keep folding until it’s all in there.
Fold gently - don't disturb the foam!
Gently scoop the mixture into a spotlessly clean and un-greased tube pan (grease + meringues = not so good). Level the top with a spatula and ease it into the oven for 35 minutes, until the top is a lovely golden brown.
Remove the cake from the oven and immediately invert the pan. I like the old wine bottle trick, where you invert the pan and stand it on the neck of a full bottle of wine. Inverting the pan prevents the very fragile cake from collapsing on itself as it cools, and putting it on a wine bottle allows for sufficient air flow underneath to speed the cooling process. Don’t touch the cake for a couple of hours until it is completely cool. Not to fret – the cake will not fall out on its own – you didn’t grease the pan, remember?
The old wine bottle trick
While the cake is baking/cooling, you can make your strawberry goo. You can also do this the day before, which is handy if you’re having a dinner party.
In a pot, combine 1/3 cup granulated sugar, 1/2 cup water, 1 tbsp lemon juice, and 8 oz frozen strawberries. Now, the last time I made this recipe I didn’t have enough strawberries, so I decided to up the amount. Therefore, I dumped in an entire package of frozen strawberries, which was 600g, or about 21 oz. This was a goodly amount for my purposes, but it does end up leaving you with a lot of extra glaze. I froze my extra glaze for some invention at a later date.
Anyway, stir your pot mixture to dissolve the sugar while you bring it to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for about ten minutes. I don’t recommend covering the pot and walking away. Bad things happen. My house still smells like burnt sugar. Keep an eye on that sucker.
The strawberries should be super gooshy at this point. Remove the pot from the heat and strain your solids from your liquids by pouring the mixture through a sieve into a measuring cup. Make sure to get as much liquid as possible from your solids and set them aside.
Mmmmetric . . .
Return the liquid to the pot and bring it to a simmer again. Whisk 1 tbsp corn starch into 3 tbsp water and pour the suspension into the syrup. Bring the syrup to a boil again, stirring often. This will activate the starch and cause the syrup to thicken. When it does, remove it from the heat. Set the syrup aside to cool, then refrigerate for a while until cold.
Cooling the goo.
Now back to the cake. Once it is completely cool you can set it upright again. Run a thin knife between the cake and the pan to loosen it. Make sure to run the knife around the tube as well. If your tube pan has a separating bottom, you can now just lift out the bottom panel and run your knife around that to free the cake. If not, jimmying the knife around and jiggling the cake itself generally helps to get it out of the pan.
Knife that sucker.
Put the cake on a clean surface, and using a long serrated knife, cut the cake equally in half horizontally. Try to keep your lines straight.
Cut it in half horizontally.
Remove the top half of the cake and set it aside. In the bottom half, use a spoon or your fingers to scoop a shallow trough in the cake all the way around, like a wee moat. You can eat the bits that you scoop out, mmmm. Fill the moat with your strawberry solids, all the way around.
Fill the trough with solid goo. I mean strawberries.
Put the top half of the cake back on and pretend that you never cut it at all.
Take your chilled glaze and, using a spatula, silicone brush, spoon, or whatever is easiest, coat the entire cake, even in the little hole, with the glaze.
Blazing Glaze!
Put the glazed cake aside until you are ready to serve it. A little bit of time also allows the glaze to set a bit. Right before serving, whip yourself up some cream, about 1 1/2 to 2 cups whipping cream, with 1 tbsp granulated sugar and 1 tsp vanilla. Over-whip the cream a bit so it’s stiffer and maintains its shape.
Slather the whipped cream all over the cake, even in the hole in the middle, until it’s evenly covered. You can go for the smooth-looking approach by using a long knife, or you can go crazy with whorls and cowlicks and whatever. I like to dump about 2-3 cups of fresh sliced strawberries all over the top and into the hole before serving. Oh man, oh man . . .
Slather with whipped cream and strawberries right before serving.
Cover left-over cake (hah, as if that’s even possible) with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to a week, if it lasts that long.
Wrap the cake with plastic wrap and it will keep for a few days, though it will sag a bit.
On Sunday the Pie and I had KK, Il Principe, and D, J, and S over for an Easter feast.
I have a lot on my plate this week (and I’m not talking about food here) so I’m going to draw the recounting of this tale out as long as I possibly can. I’ll try to give you a post a day about all the fun and fantastic things we ate.
I love to have dinner parties. I think it’s my parents’ influence again. I’m not really happy unless I can stuff someone else with food until he or she feels the need to lie down. It really makes my day.
That said, entertaining, on a small or large scale, takes a lot of work and a lot of planning. Timing is pretty much everything, and it takes practice to get it all to happen at the same time. The Pie and I have it down to an exact science at this point. We take a gander at what time things are supposed to be done, chuck them in the oven or on the stove at the various points in time we think they need to go in, then we shut our eyes tight and cross our fingers that everything will turn out properly. Most of the time we’re right but it took years to get us to this stage.
I have also learned the art of making things ahead of time. This saves a lot of panic in the kitchen when you’re trying to get everything finished at the same time. If there are some dishes on your menu that can be popped in the microwave or in the oven for reheating at the last minute then all the better. Another important thing to remember, and something that I only recently learned, is that you don’t have to make absolutely everything from scratch. There is nothing wrong with adding store-bought chips to your dips, or purchasing bread as a side. The more stuff you make the more complications you are going to have. Besides, sometimes the store versions of things are actually better. You don’t have to have absolute control over everything that goes on your menu, and so that is why, finally, it is also important to let other people give you a hand if they want to. Kª wanted to bring a salad, and you know what? I thought that was a great idea. And it was a great salad.
Pita Chips (store-bought — really, you don’t have to be a domestic maven all the time – I get the In Snax sea salt versions from In Foods Inc. They are totally tasty.)
In a clean bowl, whip two egg whites until soft peaks form and set aside. The eggs will fluff up the best if you bring them to room temperature first. To do this I put my eggs in a bowl of warm water before separating them.
In yet another bowl, sift together two cups flour with one teaspoon baking powder. Slowly add this, alternating with one and one-half cups buttermilk, to the yolk mixture.
Maybe try maple syrup. Or home-made 
I spent 1990-1995 living on a relatively high security 
Heat on medium, stirring often, until all the berries are defrosted and broken up.
Angel food is one of my favourite cakes, always has been, even since I was a child. My mother would rarely make it because without a stand mixer it’s kind of a pain in the ass. With my lovely Kitchenaid this whole shebang is a breeze.
Gently scoop the mixture into a spotlessly clean and un-greased tube pan (grease + meringues = not so good). Level the top with a spatula and ease it into the oven for 35 minutes, until the top is a lovely golden brown.
Ali Does It Herself 