Here we come a wassailing

I love an old folklore tale as much as the next person, maybe more..After all, like I said in my Cumbrian tales blog, I am a second-gen hippie…. so whilst, as school choir girl, I would quite happily sing ‘Here we come a wassailing’ without the foggiest idea what a wassail was, I am now rather intrigued to find out more and impart my new knowledge onto you dear reader. As with all good English folk traditions, this one comes with cake!

The pagan festival of Wassailing, often thought to date back to the Anglo-Saxon times, has a lot of significance in rural areas and took place in the depths of a bleak midwinter, either on Twelfth Night or on Old Twelvey Night (17 January) according to the Julian calendar.

I guess that it’s a lot like us now marking Blue Monday in the calendar (around mid-January) as the most depressing day of the year. Or rather, as I like to think of it; Brew Monday, the perfect excuse to drink copious amounts of tea.

What is Wassailing?

This celebration, often taking place in orchards, was all about communal hope, good cheer, banishing bad spirits and trying to get the good spirits to bless the fruit trees and ensure a good harvest the following season.

Toasting the Apple Trees

All of this was done by causing a noisy riot around the apple trees, singing songs, dancing and drinking lots and lots of cider. A communal ‘Wassail bowl’ was used in the past for this ritual but I don’t think that would stand up to health and safety these days.

It wasn’t just the apples and pears that were celebrated during the Wassail. It was also symbolic for encouraging health and fertility, not only for the humans but also the animals.

In many places, Wassailing also took place within the barns and stables as livestock were also blessed for a good year to come. Farm hands would do this by dipping sprigs of rosemary in the Wassail bowl and then sprinkling cider on their heads - all while singing their praises.

Why Wassailing?

The word Wassail comes from the Old English ‘was hál’, meaning ‘be hale’ or ‘good health.’Another popular Wassailing tradition was house calling  - a lot like carol singers- where revellers would go from house to house, spreading good cheer by singing and offering good wishes in return for food and, more commonly, cider. 

                                            

                                        The Wassail at Eat Riddlesden Hall, Keighley

Besides copious amounts of cider, no wassail celebration was complete without a rich, hearty Wassail cake, often served warm. I’ve adapted this traditional recipe, much to the horror of actual Wassail goers by replacing cider with apple juice for a non-alcoholic version.

Non-Alcoholic Wassail Cake:

Ingredients:

• 225g eating apples (peeled and chopped)
• 110g raisins
• 110g walnuts
• 225g apple juice
• 170g butter
• 100g honey
• 4 medium eggs
• 200g self-raising flour
• 2 tsp baking powder

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a square tin. (or round)
• Add the raisins and apple juice to a pan and bring to the boil, simmer for a few mintues to allow the raisins to plump up before adding the apples, walnuts and removing from the heat.
• Cream the butter and honey.
• Sift together the flour and baking powder. Gradually beat in the eggs
• Fold in half the flour, then half the cider mixture. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about an hour, or until golden and firm.

Serve your moist spiced cake with a warm apple juice, cider or a cup of tea.

A Masterclass with P&O Food Hero, Eric Lanlard

Things were about to get fluffy in the kitchen on the first full day of my P & O Food Heroes cruise to the Norwegian Fjords as this morning I was heading to the Cookery Club for a masterclass with Eric Lanlard! 

First, though, it was time for a quick trip around the ship. Taking a tour of the decks is one of the must-do items on the list of ‘things to do on the first day of a Cruise’ so that you can familiarise yourself with where everything is but I simply ran out of time yesterday. 

Leaving the tour until the morning is actually preferable as you have the ship pretty much to yourself, very useful if you want t take lots of pictures. 

As Norway is an hour ahead of British Summer Time, the ship’s clocks went forward at 2am in the morning. Ok, I thought, I’ll change the clock on my phone so that I don’t miss the masterclass. Ha ha ha.

Needless to say, it didn’t work, I woke up at 8am, thinking it was 7am and very nearly missed the start of the class….just kidding I was still there 15 minutes early. 

The cookery club, on deck 17 is right at the top of the ship and is ironically right next door to the gym. It has room for 24 people around 12 stations; that means 2 people to a bench.  

In the masterclass we were making lemon meringue cupcakes -oooh

apple shuffle -ooooh

and finally, white chocolate and passion fruit cake pops. 

We gathered around the front bench as Eric Lanlard demoed how to make the cupcake sponge and lemon curd. (We didn’t actually make the curd ourselves which I was a bit disappointed about but I guess the class would have gone one for a lot longer than three hours if we had.) 

On our workstations, all of the ingredients were weighed out ready for us to use and Eric Lanlard recommended that you always have your ingredients prepared like this before you start baking for precision and in the interest of being organised.  

There are two main ways of making cake pops, the method I use is spherical cake tins into which I then insert lollipop sticks once the cake is cooked and cooled. 

Alternatively, you can crumb a ready-made sponge cake into buttercream which you then roll into balls before freezing. 

Meanwhile, melt white chocolate over a Bain Marie (or microwave) and dip in the end of a lollipop stick into the chocolate until coated before inserting into the middle before returning the cake pop to the fridge/freezer. 

Once set, dip the cake pop into the chocolate and liberally coat before decorating with sprinkles or whatever else you want. Unfortunately, the kitchen may have been a bit too warm for our cake pops and which made dipping them problematic. I then went on to spill water on them and the chocolate didn’t quite set. 

Finally, the last dish that we did in the masterclass was an apple souffle. Readers of this blog will know that I learnt how to make a souffle du fromage at Le Gargantua last year so I was keen to try a sweet souffle, the problem was that calvados and I do not get along. Although the souffle mix looked alright before going into the oven, it didn’t cook properly so I’m just going to have to try the recipe again at home….sans the calvados. 

There's meringue in the bowl, just checking that those peakes are stiff enough.

After eating all those cake I joined my mother and father for a salsa class before heading over to the Live Lounge for ‘an audience with Eric Lanlard, where the world famous patissier shared stories about his incredible career. From working with Albert and Michel Roux to baking a cake for the Queen Mother. 

5 Blackberry recipes that you might have been missing out on

The blackberry bushes near us are fit to bursting point which is why, when my father and I meandered down to the bramble bushes we returned with 2kg of the berries! What on earth was I going to do with all those blackberries? 

Instead of going for just the standard jam route I was keen to try something a bit different with my berries and to see just how far I could stretch my punnets.

Cake was definitely on the cards so I rustled up a simple sponge recipe and added 200g blackberries and baked at 180°c for 1 to 1 1/2 hour.  

Second I set some blackberries aside for a smoothie which I will make with kefir, a fermented probiotic culture that contains many beneficial bacteria and yeasts, yoghurt and a spot of honey to taste.

Chia Jam

When I first got to thinking about what to make with my multitude of blackberries, jam instantly jumped to mind yet I was a bit underwhelmed and the thought at making another batch of jam (we still have some of the blackcurrant stuff left) so I racked the internet’s brains for other ideas and this one kinda stuck.  

Obviously, it wouldn’t be me writing up recipes without experimenting and changing a few things so without further ado here's my take on chia jam:

You will need:

1.1 kg blackberries

100ml lemon juice

100m water

150ml honey

200g chia seeds

When you hydrate Chia seeds they become gelatinous, which, as some of the readers of my blog will now (or maybe you just know this anyway) is why they are often used as a substitute for eggs in baking. Following this thought process, it can be assumed that chia seeds can be used in jam making instead of sugar to set the set the jam. n.b. you will need to keep this jam in the fridge though and eat it within two weeks as it has not been preserved like jam has and therefore won’t last as long.

So yeah, I guess I lied, that whole last paragraph was further ado. 

Method:

In a pan boil the fruit and lemon juice for 3-5 minutes to soften the fruit. If like me, you realise at the last minute that you have in fact run out of lemons, use oranges. 

Mash the fruit using a fork, masher or blender depending on how fine you want your jam to be. 

Once boiling and bubbling away nicely stir in the honey.

Add the chia seeds and stir once only before removing from the heat and spooning your jam into sterilised jars.

Overnight Oats

Overnight oats are very in vogue with the health conscious,  clean eating fam so here’s my version featuring…you guessed it…blackberries.

As you’ve probably guessed from the name overnight oats require being made the night before as the cold oats steep in the milk overnight and require zero cooking, it's really really simple to make too. 

I’m actually going to go one step further with my super-easy overnight oats recipe because though some other recipes require a blender, mine doesn’t.

You will need:

65/70g oats - depending on how hungry you get in the morning

225ml almond milk

2 tbsp chia seeds

75g blackberries

2 tbsp of honey (to taste) 

Method:

Fill the base of your container, I'm using a jar with a handle with oats and pour the almond milk until it covers the oats (you made need more) 

Wham the other ingredients that you want to use in the jar and pop it in the fridge overnight. 

 

I decided to serve my overnight oats with a spoonful of the chia jam (see above)

Blackberry Brownies

The sharp, somewhat tart taste of blackberries works well with the rich flavour of dark chocolate and for the last recipe that I am going to share with you (on this post at least) marries these two flavours in deliciously moist brownies.

You will need:

225g sugar

113g butter (melted)

30g cocoa powder

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp baking powder

125g plain flour

150-200g blackberries

30g walnuts (optional)

30g cocoa nibs (optional)

Method:

I’ve gone for another super-duper easy recipe for this one which is basically put everything in a bowl (except the blackberries) and mix well.  

Carefully fold in the blackberries trying not to burst them before you cook them. Spoon the mixture onto a lined tray and bake at 180°c for 20 -25 minutes. 

Sticky Toffee Cake and a Bake Off

The Golden Fleece hosted the third annual Fleece Fest this bank holiday weekend and that meant it was time once again for the Great Birkenshaw Bake Off. 

My offering this year was to be a Sticky Toffee Cake and I set off down to pub full of hope yet these were soon to be dashed as cake upon cake arrived each looking better than the next. 

There seemed to be a common feeling in the air between this year’s bakers as similar recipe ideas kept cropping up, there were two chocolate orange cakes and even another sticky toffee cake to accompany mine. I knew I should have done that raspberry and pistachio cake that I had been planning.

Are you not going to take the bloody foil off?

There was new marking system in place this year, one which seemed to favour presentation and so although I had upped my decoration game this year, the piping even worked this time,  my cake still came up short.

Third places went to the Sticky Toffee Pudding cake, second to the Terry’s Chocolate Orange cake and the winning cake was the very elaborate fondant icing decorated ‘Down The Rabbit Hole Cake.’ 

As I was accompanied this year by both my mother and grandmother we took it up on ourselves to buy a slice of each of these winning cakes to take home to try. It turns out that I am a very harsh critic. 

I think he's trying mine

Does that look like a happy face? I can't tell

To make your own Sticky Toffee Cake you will need:

For the cake:

400g prunes/dates

500ml tea

250g butter

400g sugar

6 eggs

1tsp bicarb 

4tbsp golden syrup

500g self-raising flour

Start by preheating the oven to 180 degrees c and lining a deep cake dish with greaseproof paper. 

Finley chop the dates and prunes and soak in hot tea for about 10 minutes

Cream the butter and sugar

Slowly add to the mix your syrup, bicarb, eggs and fruit as well the flour, folded in a spoonful at a time. At this stage, I divided the mixture into two, one-half for the competition and the other half for my mother’s birthday cake. 

To this second batch, I also added 50g walnuts. 

Bake in the oven for 55 minutes (maybe longer depending on the size of the tin) or until it brings back and an inserted skewer comes out clean.

4 ways to use your blackcurrant harvest this year

Despite having lived in the same house for practically my whole life it wasn't until a few years ago that we discovered that that bush down at the bottom of the garden is actually a blackcurrant bush.

No surprises then as to whose job it is to go and collect said blackcurrants. Dropping the punnet halfway through and falling into the bush not required but they happened anyway.

After two hours of picking two pints of the fruit, I returned to the kitchen for the fun job of removing the stalks and was faced with the dilemma of what to do with the blackcurrants now that I had them.

As some of the beady eyed amongst you may have noticed I managed to stretch my blackcurrants quite far making not 1, not 3 but 4 items including jam, cordial, scones and sorbet.

Sorbet

Well actually I just stuck some of the blackcurrants in the freezer to make sorbet at a later date but that still counts right?

Jam

For the jam, I used this simple recipe from the BBC which uses the same amount of blackcurrants to sugar as well the juice of one lemon. Boil the jam until it reaches 105 degrees Celsius or (if you don't have a fancy sugar thermometer (I don't) you can do the saucer test to see if your jam is ready.

Place a small spoon of your jam onto a saucer and tilt the plate so that the jam runs. The aim is that your jam will have set and should not drip down the plate. If it does drip, however, let it boil for a few minutes longer.

Cordial

Because you can't have blackcurrants without Ribena right? My intention was to halve this recipe  yet after adding the right amount of both blackcurrants and sugar I then completely forgot about the whole 'halving the recipe' thing and proceeded to pour in the full 300ml of water and 2 zest and juices of lemon so that my version of the cordial actually tastes a bit more like lemonade than Ribena.

Scones

Finally, I turned my intention to making scones to go with my jam yet mine had the addition of blackcurrants which added a lovely tart flavour and a spot of colour.

One last day of baking

 Our last day at Le Gargantua arrived too soon but don’t worry too much because we still had Fraiseiers and a whole lot of choux to look forward to. 

Unlike the previous days at Le Gargantua, there was to be no morning excursion. Instead we spent the whole day in the kitchen cooking up a storm, indeed between the Choux de Pistache: choux pastry shells with a cracklalan top filled with pistachio cream, Fraisiers,; biscuit jaconde (which is actually a sponge cake) creme patissiere and lots and lots of strawberries (remember those from the other day, I told you that they would be making a reappearance)  and finally Coffee Religeuse, as seen on GBBO, this includes more choux pastry, creme pat and coffee flavoured royal icing. Oh and we baked the baguettes as well.

With temperatures outside nearing 35°c and the ovens and stoves at full blast, you can imagine that it was rather hot in the kitchen and I spent a good part of the day helping myself to ice cold beverages from the drinks fridge. 

Our day was divided into two separate parts; in the morning we baked and prepared all of the components needed; including making the highly anticipated creme pat, whilst the afternoon was set aside for construction and assembling the troops…I mean choux nuns.

By the latter stages, the temperature in the kitchen was getting really quite intense and no sooner had we piped one bit of cream than it had to go back into the fridge again.

There is a lot of pressure is patisserie that everything needs to look beautiful which for me is not something I’m exactly very good at. This inevitably led to pistachio creme patisserie spilling out from the crevices of the choux bun and rather wonky looking nuns in the religeuse.

The Fraiseiers was surprisingly quite alright, it even made it to the picture table and you can see my  take on the Le Gargantua’s Facebook page (as well as my Tarte Tatin and chicken too) Looks don’t matter too much though, it's all about the taste and I can assure you that they were all delicious. 

Tomorrow, after breakfast, we will bid a fond farewell to our lovely hosts Marlene and Tom and thank them for a stunning week of food, glorious, food and to think I didn’t have to do any washing up, not once! #winning 

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