Friday morning dawned in Blackheath, misty and damp. A bit of a shock after some very lovely weather warmer than average spring weather. So instead of boxing down at Bronte I curled up with my latest Ian Rankin. Breakfast was fruit salad, yogurt and date walnut and treacle toast. Yum! I’d baked a loaf on Wednesday night to take up with us – similar to my previous loaf with an additional tablespoon of treacle to the warm water for a bit of extra colour and sweetness. Not bad indeed.
As we were in Blackheath for the weekend with another couple staying at Neil’s parents holiday cottage I hadn’t planned any adventurous baking rather just plenty of time to potter around Blackheath and its surrounds. The weather was inspiring more inside pursuits although I did brave a walk into town myself to get a bit of exercise. I pottered through a secondhand bookstore and vintage markets coming away with good selection of current literature and crime novels. I also spied a new shop dedicated to homewares which was rather exciting. It had a multitude of baking tins so I was able to purchase 4 small deep dish pie tins, an oven thermometer and electric scales. The weather and the shop had me itching to be in my kitchen. I’d woken up that morning dreaming of making puff pastry and now I wanted to make meat pies! Oh well at least I had a few cookbooks to browse and get inspiration for another Friday.
Anyway the weekend wasn’t devoid of baking and experimenting with new recipes. I’d decided to try a recipe from Sue Shepards Gluten Free Kitchen for “Up-side down pineapple polenta cakes”. They didn’t look to difficult although there were quite different from anything I’d either eaten or baked. The recipe requires the polenta to be soaked in a butter, yogurt, sugar and egg mixture. It was later afternoon by the time I was spooning the mixture into the prepared muffin tins in the hope of a late afternoon snack. I was a bit surprised that the batter was excessive – probably 1 ½ times than that required. And indeed when they came out of the oven they had overflowed the tins. Still tasty fresh out of the oven, although I was the only one who decided to taste them warm. We had them the next day after lunch with a spoonful of cream and they were still fresh and tasty while the cream was a decadent addition. Now I’m not totally happy with the recipe so I’ve decided that I’ll have to have a play around with the recipe before I put it up on the blog. So stay tuned!
The only other tasty treat I baked was the previously tested and written up one for Self-saucing Jaffa puddings. The only addition I made to the recipe was to add 50g of dark chocolate as chunks to the batter before pouring over the boiling water. Also this time round I’d gone for the single pudding in a deep oven proof bowl and made sure that I’d put it on a tray just in-case there was any overflow. Now baking in the oven at Blackheath is always a challenge as there isn’t a temperature dial on the oven although the old knob is floating around for a rough guide but its in Fahrenheit! So I kept a close eye on the pudding to ensure that the sauce didn’t overflow. I also decided to pull it out after 30 minutes and it was a good call. The pudding was well cooked , there was plenty of sauce and there wasn’t any overflow! Yay. Mind you after such pre-dinner snacks and a roast lamb dinner there was only a very small amount of room for pudding and cream, but just big enough for a small taste! Mmmm.
Anyway it was nice to have a weekend away catching up with friends in the fresh mountain air, with plenty of inspiration for future Friday baking adventures.
Baked Friday 3rd September 2010.
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