Be-Ro gingerbread recipe: Good British baking

I don't have a huge collection of cookbooks, but among my prize possessions are three editions of the Be-Ro Home Recipes book. It's a slim little volume, published by a flour company founded in the north of England in the 1920s. My oldest volume is from 1957; my newest, the fortieth edition, is from 2007.



I like them because they're a link to my childhood, and to weekends spent baking butterfly cakes and drop scones with my mom.

And they're a way to chart changes in British baking: there's no quiche or pizza in the '57 book, though there is something called milk bread (1lb plain flour, 1 tsp salt, half a pint of milk, mixed well and baked for an hour at 375-425 degrees — how's that for an exact science?).

The '57 has exactly two recipes that call for chocolate, while the '07 has 15. Simpler cakes like walnut and cherry are still with us, but now stand alongside coconut-lime loaf and peach-butterscotch pudding (um, eww?).

Some things are constant, though: Victoria sponge, Welsh griddle cakes (amazingly on page 9 of all three editions), Swiss roll.

And all three have a type of gingerbread, which is what I was hankering for today. I wanted to go with the '57 recipe, but wasn't sure about measurement; how much milk is in a teacupful?



Instead, I went with the most recent edition's gingerbread recipe.

English baking recipes measure by weight instead of volume, so a kitchen scale is a good thing. As this gingerbread is so good, I decided to convert the measurements so I could share it with y'all.

Warning: This gingerbread contains a lot of sugary, buttery goodness. If your name rhymes with Taller Green, do not attempt.

Start by heating the oven to 300 degrees, and grease an 8" square pan (unless, like me, you use silicone. What did I do before silicone??)

Two cups flour
A pinch of salt
Two teaspoons of ground ginger (or three if you want it super-gingery)
One teaspoon of allspice
One teaspoon of baking soda
Half a cup of light brown sugar
Half a cup of molasses
A quarter cup of golden syrup (treacle)
One! Stick! Of butter!
Half a cup of milk
Two eggs, beaten

What is golden syrup, you ask? It's like molasses's blonder brother; in Britain it's used in baking, and you can also spread it on toast like super-sweet honey. You can find it at Amazon; one can goes a long way.



Sift the flour into a big mixing bowl and add the rest of the dry ingredients.



In a small saucepan, combine the molasses, treacle and butter. Heat it slowly while the butter melts, but don't let it bubble.

Important note: This part smells uhhh-mazing. Be sure not to miss the chance to inhale deeply over the pan. It's like hot buttered rum without the booze.



Once the butter has melted, take the pan off the heat and add the milk. Then let it cool completely before adding the eggs (so you don't cook them) and stirring everything together.

Pour the wet ingredients onto the dry and mix well. The batter will be quite runny. Pour it into the baking pan (or rubber square, if you will).



Bake for an hour, or until a knife comes out clean.

Let it cool in the pan until you can't bear to wait any more. Slice it into generous squares while it's still slightly warm. You might need a fork, as it's sticky. This is good.



From reading other recipes containing treacle, my guess is that this will improve with age. My other guess is that this won't be around long enough for us to find out.

2011: A year in (tasteful, tasteless) review

Everyone else seems to be doing end-of-year lists, and I'm nothing if not a bandwagon-jumper, so here's my run-down of most memorable Things Consumed in 2011.

It's hard to do a rated list, because this year was a challenging one: Some things were painful to eat, some things had no flavor, and anything consumed in the last few months has been the Best (insert ingredient here) Ever, purely because I could taste it.

So instead of a Top Ten countdown, we'll go (mostly) chronologically.

Hospital food
In January, I spent a week on the cancer ward, and became a little too familiar with hospital food. I'll be honest: I find it hard to even look at the images in this post. Especially the last one. It took a while before I could enjoy a golden sunrise without thinking about processed cheese squares.

I have awesome friends
Why? Because they recognized that the best way to respond to my illness was by bringing me food. Precious few of their gifts were healthy (ha!) but they were suitably high-calorie and, of course, delicious.

Losing it
I can't talk about this year in food without mentioning the three-month period where I was unable to taste anything. Yes, it gave me a new appreciation for the subtleties of the palate and the distinctions between flavors, but mostly I learned that having no tastebuds is the opposite of fun. And it's very nice when they come back again.

Home cooking
Not a single incident, this one, but a variety of memorable dishes made at home. Or at the house we rented in Gloucester, where the vintage kitchen was a perfect place to make blueberry cobbler, lemon meringue pie, and beef Wellington (The Boy's birthday-meal request).

And also a great location for inviting friends to share steak with chimichurri, grilled chourico, and various salads.



Back at our apartment, I got into a baking Thing, and managed to fill the freezer with chocolate-zucchini cake:



and peach cake:



My intention with the latter is to save it for the crummiest winter day possible. Nothing better than eating summery peaches during a snowstorm.

British food
Between finishing treatment and going back to work, I had a small window of time to zip back to England so my parents could see all my limbs were still attached. Even though my tastebuds weren't completely recovered, I still managed to eat ev-er-y-thing.

Which includes the obscene Sunday lunch, including baby's-head-sized Yorkshire pudding, at the Toby Carvery:



My dad at the gravy station. STATION. Because one type of gravy is not enough.



Dessert was Eton Mess, a bucket of meringue, cream and fruit:



Celebrations
There were lots of reasons for good times (come on!), including The Boy's grandmother's hundredth birthday; the wedding of our good friends Eric and Nicki, with a fabulous reception at Oleanna; and my almost-completely recovered sense of taste, with an incredible dinner at Journeyman.

Honorable mentions
I don't write about everything I stuff in my face, obviously. But I do record a large quantity thereof. Delicious things I had to capture for posterity this year included:

This treat, almost (almost!) too gorgeous to eat, buttery with a hint of lemon, from The Cookie Countess:



Rich, sweet figs stuffed with peach brandy ganache and covered in dark chocolate from Capone's in Cambridge:



And a stunningly complex housemade fig vermouth at Island Creek Oyster Bar (very small-batch; there was only one bottle left when we tried this):



You know, despite evidence to the contrary, I feel as though I've been very lucky this year. Yes, there were long-drawn-out moments of suckiness, but there were also a lot of extremely fun times and reasons to be thankful, especially for The Boy, and for friends and family.

I'm also very grateful to everyone who posted supportive comments on this here blog; I'll probably never meet most of you, but your kindness meant a huge amount during a tough time.

So happy New Year — wishing good health, happiness and delicious food to all!

This week, dessert comes first

I don't often write about food events, but this week I'm making an exception for something that is meaningful to me both personally and professionally.

May 3-9 is Boston Bakes for Breast Cancer, in which restaurants across Massachusetts offer a special dessert (that's the personal interest) to benefit cancer care and research at Dana-Farber (that's the professional one).

It's a huge amount of work to pull together; I've been following organizer Carol Sneider on Twitter for some time (@Boston_Bakes), watching as she works with restaurants and bakeries from across the state, bringing more of them on board. This year, more than 200 restos are involved. Here's the complete list.

Today, I got a sneak preview of what's in store, with a sample of an insanely good pineapple sundae cake from Mediterranean restaurant in Oak Bluffs on the Vineyard.



The top is a dense pineapple jelly, and underneath are layers of tropical trifle: meringue, cream, and fresh pineapple.



I wish I had photos of more desserts (because that would mean I'd eeted them all). Luckily, the Boston Bakes website has a slideshow. I'm particularly intrigued by Clink's baba au rhum (#12).

If you're planning to eat out at any point over the next week, it's okay to think about what you want for dessert first.

The curd tart disappears

If you grew up in the north of England, your mum (and her mum, and maybe her mum) had a Be-Ro Home Recipes book, which was the Bible for basic bakery.

My mum has used the recipes for so long that she doesn't even need the book any more. It's all in her head.

It's a great no-nonsense resource for traditional pastries and puddings: pork pie, dropped scones, bakewell tart (an almond/ground-rice cake over a jam filling), toffee pudding (first ingredient: suet. Don't start), and the ultimate Christmas cake.

I have two: the 38th and 40th editions. Neither has a publication date. Only one has a barcode.




Check the not-very-PC photo of the woman passing on womanly skills to the girl while the boy looks on with satisfaction.



"I will make an obedient helpmeet!"

Anyway, back to the point.

For Easter, I decided to dip into the book and make something I hadn't eaten since I was a kid: curd tart. It's a very simple cheesecake variation; though the traditional method uses curd (which not even WholeFoods carries), it's often made with cottage cheese.

Stop going "Ewwww!" Just be patient.

Curd tart recipe
6oz short pastry

1 cup cottage cheese
4 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons currants
1 egg
1.5oz butter, melted
cinnamon and nutmeg
(I also added a little lemon zest)

Line a shallow dish with the pastry. Mix all other ingredients together. Bake at 425F for 15-20 minutes.





It's not dense like cheesecake; it's more like a ricotta dessert, with just enough of the nutmeg/raisin/creamy combination to feel traditionally English without it freaking anyone out. No lard here.

I noticed, though, that the curd tart recipe was in the 38th ed. of the book, but not in the most recent one. Pineapple upside-down cake was also missing (replaced by upside-down peach and butterscotch pudding—eww!). As was the toffee pudding and the malted fruit loaf.

Replacing them were a coconut lime loaf, a "monster-faced pizza" and the dubiously named Sticky Blobs.

It's not often I shed a tear for the passing of tradition. And I understand food trends shift and change. Still, I'm sad that recipes I grew up with are archived in favor of exotic flavor combinations and fun foods for kids. They're not even on the Be-Ro website's recipe list.

My 38th edition lost its staples a while ago; the cover is spotted with dry dough and the pages are stained and warped. But I'll hang on to it for as long as it's legible.

Deep fried cupcake. Deep. Fried. CUPCAKE!

On Friday afternoon, office buddy Dawn alerted me to the existence of the deep-fried cupcake from Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square (a place I'd visited only once before, despite its relative proximity to home).

On Saturday morning, we were so there.

For future reference, this is what you need to make a deep-fried cupcake:



You got yer regular standard deep-fat fryer; yer necessary cupcake, of course; there's yer squeezy cream; and tucked in the corner would be yer bottle of chocolate sauce. Not shown is the bowl of light batter in which the cupcake is doused before frying.

Commence to drooling and/or dialing 9 and 1 and getting ready to dial 1 again.

While we waited for nature to take its course, we checked out the other cupcake options, which included pretty sparkles:



The Green Monster:



The S'mores:



And the, um, "Cheesy Catnip Kittycake," which I assume was not for human consumption.



And then our deep-fried cupcake was ready! Oops, no it wasn't; our server had switched on the fryer and thrown the cake in without giving the oil a chance to heat. I didn't even want to know what the result looked like.

She was very apologetic ("We don't usually start deep frying until the afternoon," she said), and soon had a second cupcake in and sizzling.

While we waited some more, we watched one of the bakers unwrap several three-pound blocks of butter—and when I say butter, I mean Plugra—top them off with a couple of wholesale-sized bricks of cream cheese, and set the whole thing to churning in a serious industrial mixer. That, my friend, is how you make frosting.

And then our server took a paper cone (genius, and the only possible way to present a deep-fried cupcake), swirled chocolate sauce into its base, placed the cake inside, added more chocolate sauce, and finished it off with a generous dollop of cream.

There's actually a deep-fried cupcake under here.



See?



In truth, it could have done without quite so much smothering; save for one small corner that had missed the chocolate-and-cream deluge, and was therefore still crisp and crunchy, the rest was a big, soggy fistful.

Not that it was bad, mind you. As things that are deep fried and loaded with fat and sugar go, it was a fine example of the form: sweet and warm and completely indulgent, halfway between hot doughnut and deep-fried Twinkie.





We ate it walking down the street, our faces smeared with chocolate syrup and cream. It's not something one can consume delicately or with any pretense of sophistication. It's also something best shared; a whole one may just finish off a healthy person of average size.

And then it was gone, and we were left with a slightly heavy taste of cooking oil on the tongue. I'm not sure whether the solution would be to change to a lighter oil, or to allow the cake to drain a little before serving, or just to crank the heat up higher to make the cooking time as short as possible; that might be something to work on.

Davis Square has few options for state-fair-like indulgence, with the exception of the Belgian sugar waffle at Mr. Crepe or a scoop of maple-walnut from J.P. Licks (and even there you can almost legitimately claim there are healthy choices; hey, strawberry ice cream has fruit!).

So now there's something else to add to the list of heart-stopping goodies, though note that Kickass only does deep-fried cupcakes Friday through Sunday. Maybe it's for the best.

Sarah made cookies!

I'm always impressed when people spend a whole day in the kitchen and then give away the results.

Take lovely co-worker Sarah: she woke up on Sunday and started baking. She finished at around 9 p.m. And then she packaged her creations in gift bags with pretty paper and brought them in to work.

Espresso crinkles, dense and rich and topped with powdered sugar:





Here's the recipe—Sarah's look much nicer, don't they?

Also, raspberry-filled shortcake cookies:





I forget how much butter she said was in each one, but it was somewhere in the vicinity of All Butter Ever Made, Ever, in The History of the World.

Somehow, I resisted the urge to eat them all at my desk and then slump in my Aeron in a butter-and-sugar coma, white powder covering my face like I was in the VIP room at Studio 54.

I can't promise the same restraint in the privacy of my own home, however.

Best worst cakes ever!

A beeellion thanks to the lovely ScurvyAnn for alerting me to Cake Wrecks, a blog about entirely regrettable cake-decorating decisions.

It's a hilarious compilation of the very worst work of frosting-nozzle-wielders, from those who just really couldn't be bothered to draw anything:



to those who went just a leeetle bit overboard:



That's all I'm giving you. Go check out their terrifying treats yourself!

(And hey, Scurve, we need to round up Cindi and Murlindur! It's time!)

Hey Tatte, sorry about that :-)

Recently in this space, I wrote about a visit to Tatte, Brookline's tiny pastry store, where my excitement about the fabulousness of their buttery nut box (oo-er, missus!) was tempered by the superior attitude of the counter staff.

Last week I went back with co-conspirator Mike, who was intrigued by my tales of dessert and detachment.

And of course there was a different girl behind the counter.

And of course she was lovely: sweet and cheerful and enthusiastic about our choices.

So I can only assume that on my previous visit, I caught Tatte on a bad day.

Sorry, Tatte.

Also, your pistachio cookies are fabulous.

Puerto Rican friendship cake

The Boy's parents arrived from Puerto Rico, smuggling all kinds of contraband through customs: lechón from Guavate, morcilla, orchid cuttings from the back yard and an entire friendship cake. More on the former later; today's discussion is about that cake.



This is one of those times I wish my blog had smell-O-vision functionality; there were some pretty potent sugar fumes emanating from the cake, practically misting up the lens while I took photos.

It's incredibly moist and heavy, but at the same time it's airy, rather than stodgy.



While we tasted the cake, The Boy's mom outlined the recipe:

Combine a can of peaches in syrup, a cup of sugar and a fruit juice such as fresh apple cider (she uses mavi, a lightly fermented drink made from tree bark) in a glass jar. Cover and stir once a day for ten days.

Ten days.

Then add maraschino cherries and more sugar. Allow to sit, stirring every day for another ten days.

Then throw in a can of fruit cocktail and more sugar. Sit and stir.

On the last day (or therebouts; by this time, I was busy trying to calculate sugar content and/or alcohol volume), throw in some raisins. And possibly brandy.

Oh, there were pineapple chunks in there somewhere as well.

Then make up a batch of yellow cake mix from a box, using your new concoction in place of the instructed liquid. And throw the fruit in as well.

Of course, you're not going to use up the entire quantity of liquid in one cake; this is where the friendship part comes in.

You decant the liquid into jars and give them to your best buddies, along with the recipe, so they can make their own moist, potent sugar bomb.

My first question: who came up with this idea? Which ingenious housewife decided, "You know, I bet if I threw together a whole bunch of fruit and sugar and let it sit for a month, it would make a butt-kicking cake?"

The answer had to be online somewhere, right?

Okay, so I couldn't find an individual culprit. But I did find a number of variations on the theme that suggested it may have been originally a German recipe that made its way to the US with the Amish.

And even then, there are two versions of Amish friendship cake: one with the Lord's own fruit cocktail and one with yeast.

Other variations involve the fruit and the yeast. And also, sometimes, instant pudding mix.

Did it arrive in Puerto Rico with some Midwestern army wife? Or brought over by well-meaning missionaries or federal do-gooders? We may never know.

So the mystery deepens, especially as recipes appear on sites around the world, though all with the same basic elements of sharing the sugar rush.

If anyone has any clearer clues, I'd love to hear 'em.

Cake, anyone?

Easter lunch

Easter is a good excuse to do lunch right, I always say. This year, we went fresh and springy and simple: roast lamb leg studded with garlic and rosemary (the latter harvested from our herb garden last year and stored in the freezer); roast golden beets; steamed redskin potatoes tossed in olive oil; and English peas, which The Boy shelled and basically poached in butter and fresh mint.



Emboldened by my recent success with saffron cake, I felt inspired to bake dessert: Swiss Easter rice tart, courtesy of Nick Malgieri.

This is a rich, dense, eggy-buttery tart with ground almonds, puréed rice and a hint of lemon zest; it's somewhere between rice pudding and flan. And frankly, it was damn near perfect.



You know, I'm kinda getting the hang of this baking lark.

Reconsidering lovin' the oven

I've long regarded my oven with the same wary suspicion as Charlie Brown views the kite-eating tree; nothing good comes of messing with it. While generally a benevolent dictator when it comes to roasting, the oven has consistently and heartlessly laughed at my attempts to bake.

Essentially, my oven is a liar. It claims to be hot enough when it's still 100 degrees away. It pretends to maintain consistent temperature while quietly cooling down. It beeps at me for no good reason.

The incident that led to my loss of baking confidence occurred two years ago: a Christmas cake recipe that promised moist, fruity richness manifested itself as a dense, impenetrable slab of concrete.

After that, I installed a stand-alone thermometer (aka lie detector), which helps a little. But I'd already been betrayed, and it was hard to believe I could ever really trust it again.

And then, through my enlistment in the Foodie BlogRoll, I discovered Baking for Britain's recipe for Cornish saffron cake.

Sure, I could probably have started slowly, maybe with cupcakes or oatmeal cookies. But the cake was so wonderfully yellow, and the recipe was allegedly devised by a 6-year-old, so I figured I was safe.

It starts with saffron in warm milk.



The dough has butter, flour, sugar, yeast, the saffron-infused milk, and dried fruit.



Once baked, the loaves are--

Wait, let me rephrase that.



I baked something! And it worked!!



Oven: pwned. For now.