i woke up with the flour out

A day off is one of the best things in the world. I've spent mine sleeping in just a little bit, mucking round on the internet in the afternoon sun, experimenting with cake recipes (cakesperimenting? No, that sounds gross) listening to Broadway records, and standing at the open fridge, purposefully grasping handfuls of jelly from the plate of it that we forgot to serve up at Tim's party last week, and eating it. Fortunately for you, all I'm going to elaborate on is the cake. Wait, that's a lie. I will elaborate on everything.

While mucking round on the internet...where I still am...I found this video of one of my fav food-people, Yotam Ottolenghi, talking about food, family and love. Who knew he was as louche and good-looking as his recipes? Not I.

I listened to the indefatigable original cast recording of Company today - being home by yourself is the best time to test whether or not you can keep up with Getting Married Today.

The jelly had one layer of strawberry and one layer of pineapple, and Tim made it. It's his one specialty. To be fair, he's not living in an environment that allows people other than me to have kitchen specialties. To be fair again, he's really, really good at making jelly. That's not even damning with faint praise, it's pretty easy to get wrong. Sometimes the gelatine goes all chewy...you could pour boiling water on your foot instead of in the bowl...that sort of thing.

And...the cake. I've been wondering for a while now whether you could replace the ground almonds in a recipe with dessicated coconut - they're both pretty similar as far as texture and properties go. Today was the day that I got to try it. I used this excellent Torta Caprese recipe (which was my birthday cake last year) but left out the chocolate, and instead of using melted butter, I went for a smooth measure of coconut cream. So this is gluten and dairy free now. While it's nice to have gluten-free recipes around in case your friends (or more urgently, you yourself) can't eat it, it's also fun to play around with recipes - why commit only to flour when there are so many other ways a cake can be itself. 

Luckily, it being an experiment and all, it's terrifically delicious. Not traditionally cakey exactly, but solid enough that you can slice it into wedges without it disintegrating. To give it a bit of shine, I made a glazey icing out of brown sugar, more coconut cream, and custard powder all boiled up together. The triple coconut punch of the ingredients wasn't overpowering - although it'd take a whole lot of coconut for me to feel overpowered. Its mellow, cloudy sweetness and damp texture make this cake a joy to eat, with the soft glaze lusciously smooth in contrast and flutteringly caramel of flavour (not to mention so trendily mustard-coloured that you half expect a fashionista to bust through the window, steal, it wear it as a wondrous cape and then blog about it.)

Please excuse how the knife's all streaked up from where I licked it, after cutting the slice of cake...

Pac-man cake! I should probably say something sensible about this cake now. Okay. It tastes amazing, and it's so easy - just a bowl and a whisk is all you need. Desiccated coconut is a whole lot cheaper than ground almonds, and while they might not be interchangeable for all recipes, it worked well in this one.  It's a squat little disc of a cake, about an inch high, like it's been sat on. But, it's saucy enough to be served up for pudding, while retaining enough cake persona to accompany a mug of milky tea (or black tea, if you want to keep with the dairy-free theme.) It helps to be a fan of coconut before you barge into this, but the finished result is so flourishingly delicious that it could charm you all the same.

Coconut Cake with Brown Sugar Coconut Cream Glaze 

Note: 1 regular tin of coconut cream should be enough for everything here plus a little leftover for whatever else you want to do with it. 

4 eggs

170g sugar

200g dessicated coconut

250 ml/1 cup coconut cream

Line the base of a 22cm springform caketin with baking paper and grease the sides. Set your oven to 180 C/350 F.

Whisk together the eggs, then add the sugar and whisk some more until the mixture has thickened and expanded a little. Fold in the coconut and the coconut cream, pour into the caketin and bake for 50 minutes to an hour. Cover with tinfoil towards the end if it gets too dark on top.

Brown Sugar Coconut Glaze

Boil together 1/2 cup cream, 3 tablespoons brown sugar, and 1 tablespoon custard powder, stirring the whole time. Let it bubble away for a minute or so till a rich mustardy-brown colour, then allow to cool a little before spooning over the cake.  

Speaking of things...that are...anyway, without further attempted segueing, here's my new video tutorial, all about pastry. Specifically, short pastry and the gluten-free and vegan pastry that I used to make the roast vegetable tarts earlier this year. Hope you like it. This one's a bit longer than the first one, because there's two recipes, but on the upside, I didn't have a massive sleep-inducing lunch before I started filming this time. 

If you do make the vegan/gluten free pastry that I outline in the video and are wondering what you can do with it, last night I made a Roast Onion Tart - I rolled the pastry out between two sheets of baking paper and then lifted it into a pie plate, pressing it down and patching up the raggedy edges. I baked it as is for 15 minutes at 200 C, then  once it was out, lowered the temperature to 180 C and in a tinfoil lined tray, roasted 4 red onions, peeled and halved, and a few fat cloves of garlic, all drizzled with some avocado oil. Once the pie shell was cooled I spread it with some baba ghanouj leftover from the party, but you could use hummus, or tahini, or any spread, or even just some white beans or chickpeas mashed with a fork. Once the onions were glossy and tender, I pressed on the garlic cloves to get all the soft garlic onto the baba ghanouj, then topped it with pieces of onion, then sprinkled over some walnuts (that a family friend had sent back down with us when we visited Mum and Dad - cheers Dianne!) and some thyme leaves. 

Tasty stuff, pretty cost-efficient, and while not the fastest meal in town, it's not taxing to make.

Feel free to make requests for future content, fling handfuls of praise, question the many cuts (Either I got tongue tied, or I'd talk way too much, both of which require some severe editing) or express concern at my lack of mathematical agility. Not that I'm bothered by it.
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Title via: I am not actually much of an Arcade Fire fan at all, but luckily for this blog post, the one I track of theirs that I like is Neighbourhood #3 (Powerout). 
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Music lately:

At the recommendation of good lady and friend Jo, I've been listening to a lot of Mavis Staples today. As well as having a seriously cool name, Mavis Staples has the kind of soulful voice and sound befitting someone whose career spans more than 60 years.

You can stream the whole Haunted Love album at undertheradar.co.nz - it's very good, but if you need convincing or don't have the time, try their very pretty current single San Domenico.
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Next time: Not totally sure yet - I have some food plans up my sleeve though (luckily not actual food up my sleeve, that wouldn't be fun.)

whether drunk or sober, ice is getting colder

When I was 12, I became pretty obsessed with a lady called Linda Goodman. All I could do was re-read her books over and over again, loitering by the 00 section of the local library in the hopes that there's be something new (pre-Google, I wasn't to know she'd died in 1995, thus making new book output unlikely.) Linda Goodman dealt in the subject of horoscopes, and I completely believed every word she said about my sign of Aries. Eventually I lost the level of interest in her writing but I've never been able to quit starsigns altogether - I'm always gravitating towards the newspaper to see what direction my day could take in spite of every negative prediction causing me to sternly tell myself it's over.

Is it longing for guidance in this uncertain world? Is it actually the cosmic truth? Is it that I'm a bit self-absorbed and like to read things about myself and think, "oh, that's so typically Aries of you, Laura!" Probably definitely the last one. Anyway, I bring this up because my horoscope today said "Your plans are more ambitious than you first realised, (cue Homer Simpson style "aaagh!" from me) though they are still very much within the realm of possibility. ("Phew!")  You will need a lot of help. ("D'oh!")

Of all the horoscopes to read when you're planning on debuting your YouTube video tutorial on how to make homemade ice cream! So I decided to cautiously ignore it, except for the bit about the "realm of possibility." I want to go to there!

I know, would I ever stop talking about ice cream? But two things prompted this into existence: the Ice Cream Guidelines list I made last time got me thinking that I could be even more demonstrative, and after having some delicious cider on Friday night I got to thinking that its sparkling, crisp apple flavour would be ideal in ice cream. And the reason I was drinking cider, was because I won some from Old Mout, just by tweeting them. And here I am talking about them! Ten points to their marketing team. And to me too, because it's really delicious cider.

Let me defensively acknowledge some things first so you don't have to: Yes, it's distinctly amateurish, as I have but a phone to be filmed with. Yes, there are a lot of cuts and it's a little quiet. Yes, I was in a post-lunch downwards spiral, but there was no other time to make the ice cream. Yes...I am pretty toothy. It's from my mum's side. On the other hand, it was really fun, and the pilot episode is always a bit shaky, right? (Unless you're, like, Game of Thrones) Honestly, I really enjoyed this, and while it's a little bit nervous-making putting yourself out there on YouTube, I'm already on here. If this blog is all the thoughts in my head, the videos are a bit like what you'd hear if you were sitting at my dining table with a cup of tea, or perhaps walking past me on the street, where I'm still very likely to be talking about custard.

Suggestions for the next one are welcome (although "Please! No more!" will be studiously ignored like a bad horoscope) but I must warn you, I'm already thinking about pastry: one batch traditional and buttery, one batch gluten free. What say you?

Cider Ice Cream

4 egg yolks
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups cream (plus - optional - an extra 1 cup cream)
1 cup apple cider (I used Old Mout's Classic Apple. Use what you like - I also love Bulmer's.)

Find a freezer-safe container of about 1 litre capacity. 

In a wide pan, carefully heat 1 1/2 cups cream. Don't let it boil - turn it off once you start seeing steam rising off it. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks and sugars till thickened and a little bit lighter in texture. Carefully pour a little hot cream into the yolks and sugar, stirring thoroughly, then pour in the rest.

Wipe out the pan and tip everything back into it. Stir continuously with a spatula over a very low heat, till it's the texture of a good thickshake. Remove from the heat, continuing to stir - you now have custard. Once it has cooled a little, whisk in the cider, and scrape it all into the container. Freeze. 

If you like, once the ice cream is partially set, you can whisk up the extra cup of cream till thickened but not whipped and mix the two thoroughly together. This gives it a creamier texture, and of course, gives you more ice cream. But frozen custard on its own is all good.

As I said, I thought it up on Friday night and foolhardily tweeted about it, which, in my dubious code of honour, means that it had to happen. Luckily, it tastes spectacular - the apple flavour shines, with a mysterious hint of fermentation, which gives it a strangely sophisticated edge that you wouldn't get from mere apples alone. Yet the cider flavour isn't overwhelming either, with any threat of pub-carpet scent fades as the mixture freezes. I was a bit nervous that the aggressively bubbly structure of the cider would bubble right into the custard and break it up, but apart from a little fizzing, the two liquids settled into each other nicely.

Alcohol doesn't freeze, so the cider content keeps this lusciously soft - I spooned the scoops of ice cream you see above straight from the freezer. It's truly delicious stuff. 

While on the subject of shoddy video editing, my mission to turn Poppy the kitten into an internet sensation continues with her first video.

ALSO, I recently had an article published for the clearly excellent and discerning 3news.co.nz, called How To Hunt a Cookbook. If you've ever thought long and hard about how to get more second-hand cookbooks in your life, this might help you out some.
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Title via: Local wonder David Dallas and his bouncy, affable, and crocodile-snappy tune Till Tomorrow from The Rose Tint.
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Music lately:

Mariah Carey's MTV Unplugged album is so brilliant, it caught me by surprise and I listen to her enough to forget that she really was, and still is, monumentally talented. Listen to her sing Make it Happen - when she cries "Grrrrouuuund-aahhh" towards the end I nearly cried from the amazingness of it all.

Neil Young, Don't Let It Bring You Down - one of my favourite songs of his. Having been about six years since I lost my copy of his biography Shakey, I can't remember how exactly he got into singing (what with that improbable voice) but I'm so glad he did.
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Next time: Possibly...a drink called Purple Jesus. Or the very sensible pea soup that I promised last time.