Enjoy the cake and stop feeling guilty

Cake in Venice: how much marg do you think it contained?

If ever there was a revealing comment about food and varied national relationships toward it, it came on Wednesday night in the shape of BBC4’s Patisserie with Michel Roux Jr.

It was an interesting programme anyway, ranging from the revolutionary work of Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833), the first celebrity chef – who also wrote books that included the immortal phrase: ‘You can try this at home’ – to some of Paris’s finest pâtissiers plying their skills today.

One, for instance, works with a top perfumier to create new delicacies.

But as was pointed out, if you think that’s a bit outré, Carême was playing similar games himself, filling the display stands of patisserie with scents such as rose water in order to appeal to the nose as well as the eye.

However, in one of Paris’s tea salons, Roux met American Francophile Dorie Greenspan for hot chocolate and sumptuous-looking cakes.

Greenspan has written several books about patisserie and she observed that, back in the US, she only ever heard people discuss cakes in terms of guilt: “‘It’s so good, but I really shouldn’t have this’,” she said was what she would hear from fellow Americans when she was back in the US, before then noting that there was no comparable comment that you’d be likely to hear in France.

The French, she suggested, “have a special relationship with indulgence”: they understand that a little regular indulgence is part of living a good life.

It may seem odd to think that we still harbour such a puritanical attitude in the UK, where consumerism seems to be king and where religiosity has declined in recent years, certainly in the mainstream, but we will all have heard similar attitudes voiced.

But as I’ve touched on before, our search for the ‘body beautiful’ creates a secular version of guilt, with new year’s resolutions and then Lent and then preparing for the beach – and then for the winter party season – all pressuring people to give up some foods (the ones that generally are most enjoyable) and, if they don’t, feeling guilty again.

Decades of poor diet advice has added to the guilt and the social pressures that exist around the subject.

So perhaps those are part of the reasons that we have hardly any of the sort of patisseries that you can see on so many French streets, and that instead, as Roux pointed out, we have solid Eccles cakes or Bakewell tarts handed to us in a brown paper bags, as though we’re as embarrassed as if we were hiding an adult magazine.

The French have patisserie shops that are as astonishing as any top-end boutique in the way in which they display the products for sale. And it’s not just Paris – even Collioure has one such shop, plus at least one more patisserie that I’m aware of.

There are little moments of hope: only yesterday on Twitter, ligging into the revival of baking and the apotheosis of the cup cake, Flora had paid to promote a tweet advertising Flora Buttery to bake said morsels.

Now, it’s worth noting that when an advertiser ‘promotes’ a tweet, it gets charged for any responses.

Within moments, as well as the sort of positive responses that Unilever was happy to respond directly to, others were urging people to use real butter and not something full of additives. The myths are being challenged.

For clarification, Flora Buttery’s list of ingredients runs thus:

Vegetable Oils (Seed Oils 82%), Water, Buttermilk (10.5%), Salt (1.5%), Emulsifiers: Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Lecithin, Flavourings, Preservative: Potassium Sorbate, Citric Acid, Vitamin E, Vitamin B6, Colour: Beta-Carotene, Vitamin A, Folic Acid, Vitamins D and B12.

There are no ingredients lists for a pack of unsalted butter and when making butter (which you can do in your own home) you don’t have to invent a method of making liquid solid, as you do with vegetable oils if you’re going to market them in a tub as something that can be spread as well as used in baking.

But Flora’s marketing is partly based on guilt – and a concomitant belief that using a butter substitute can make you feel less guilty by making you think that what you are using is more healthy, not least if you are feeding it to others as well as to yourself.

Of course, the entire fat-is-bad-for-you myth has been particularly successful in the US and UK.

Fat – the food type that makes for wonderful mouthfeel; that makes food tasty and which helps sate you far quicker than a whopping big bowl of cereal.

The French – who recognise that a bit of regular indulgence is good for you – also consume more dairy than anyone else on planet Earth and, in the south west of the country, have wonderfully fat-laden foods such as duck confit and foie gras available as part of the regional cuisine.

Somehow, I doubt very much that when a French pâtissier makes an Opéra – described by Larousse Gastronomique as “an elaborate almond sponge cake with a coffee and chocolate filling and icing”, any of it will have been made with margarine.

And yet – and here is the supposed ‘French Paradox’ – the French still have lower rates of heart disease than in this country or the US.

It wasn’t before time when, just a few weeks ago, Sweden because the first country to change its diet advice from a low-fat diet to a low-carb diet – a major crack in the wall of the myth that has built up over the last 40-50 years.

The British – and US – attitude is one of fear for health that ties very neatly into a guilt at culinary pleasure (indulgence), which itself is a residue of the puritanism that has affected both countries.

And because we have that deep-seated fear of ‘indulgence’, we distrust anyone who treats indulgence with a certain seriousness and as a genuine and wonderful art, and then when we do indulge, we overdo it (leading to more guilt – see new year’s resolutions again) and often do so on rubbish.

Not that the French are alone in creating such fabulous cakes – the Italians aren’t exactly bad, for instance, while the Austrians would probably make the list too.

But would it be stretching things too far to point out here that these countries, and France, have not suffered from puritanism or any other forms of non-conformist pleasure-hating denominations in the same way as the UK, US and others have.

While it produces plenty of its own psychological problems, Catholicism is rather more understanding of of ‘sin’ and pleasure and indulgence – and no, that’s not a pun on something Luther got in a huff about.

The sooner we all learn that a spot of regular indulgence is good for us, the better we’ll feel for it.

Garden firsts and squidgy cakes

Coral spot.

Life as an apprentice gardener is full of little firsts. Having 10 out of 10 peas germinate in my growhouse is the sort of first that leaves you bursting with pride (albeit having done little more than offer nature a helping hand).

Correctly diagnosing a garden problem, followed by taking appropriate action, leaves an entirely different feeling.

There have been three bushes of pyracantha in the garden for years and, when we finally got around to having the entire area paved a year last November, these were cut back and the slabs arranged around them.

The amount they grew last year was just one of a series of lessons in how resilient plants are. You may think that you, the snails or the weather have killed something off, but give it time and there is every chance that it will come back.

Last year alone we seemed to witness more revivals than Billy Graham.

But back to the pyracantha – or firethorn as it sometimes known. It was one of the first things we planted, years ago when we moved in and the garden was just a few flags in a square outside the door, and a small ‘L’ of rather poor and uneven grass with a plain, light wood fence to keep the rest of the world out.

It was one of the first things into our small patch after an early attempted break in at the back. The flats were new and, in an area that still had some years to go before the trendiness only then starting to Hoxton would move further east, must have looked pretty damned posh, even though it was a housing association build.

It provides all-year-round greenery – and wonderfully sharp thorns.

There are nice berries for the birds in the autumn and winter – although our three bushes, theoretically producing different colours, only ever actually seem to manage red.

However, one of the bushes, after serious cutting back, has seen one thick trunk die off. And that, together with a little of the joined trunk, had pinky orange spots on it.

Anyway, that’s why there’s a Royal Horticultural Society book on Pests and Diseases on the shelf, for precisely such cases.

It turned out to be a case of coral spot – nectria cinnabarina – which can infect parts of dead trees and shrubs.

Treatment is pruning carefully and possible wound sealant to stop the infection getting in again.

Down on Columbia Road, Les explained that such sealants are usually bitumen-based. But my idea of using melted wax met with approval.

Here’s a thing: you don’t get to go to B&Q and get this sort of conversation. Don’t just cultivate your garden, but your local suppliers too, wherever possible.

Back at the ranch, The Other Half removed the infected parts and then dripped wax over the fresh-cut wood, as a hint of sleet filled the air.

Hopefully, that will do the job.

Not that it was all that needed doing this morning. I’d dug more of the compost in yesterday, finally seeing something that looks like a much more mixed, lighter soil.

But while I’d been doing that, I’d noticed just how many weeds were showing their faces in the rest of the patch that is marked out for communal decking.

If I don’t do anything, they’ll be in my bit before you can say Charlie Dimmock.

Once I was out there with the Dutch hoe, in community-minded mode, I gave Michael’s bare bed a few minutes of attention too, as there were weeds sprouting where he’d cleared away another dying bush, ready to take flowers this year.

So far this year, I’m the only one doing any actual gardening, but I suspect that won’t last, once the weather is a little more consistently warmer and brighter. If …

After that, my hands – even having worn gloves – were frozen. The wind was biting.

And so to the remains of yesterday’s Westmorland farmhouse pie – topped with freshly-rolled pastry from the leftover dough.

Perfect fodder for such a day.

One of the joys of having cupboards that seem to be bursting at the seams is that on the sort of day when it’s cold and grim outside, and you suddenly fancy a cake, it’s not usually too difficult to find enough ingredients in the kitchen.

Having spent such a busy morning, I fancied dipping once more into Recipes of Lakeland as the day got progressively colder and greyer.

There are cakes and fruit breads and biscuits galore in its pages – the only shame being that all those readers who contributed recipes are not themselves credited.

Not very elegant, but plenty of taste.

In his thoroughly enjoyable Eating for England, Nigel Slater notes the extraordinary regional variety of such cakes and observes that, although English cakes lack the elegance and finesse of a Madeleine, they have “a certain wobbly charm to them” and a “lick-your-fingers stickiness”.

Dalton gingerbread seemed likely to fall into exactly that category.

Three cups plain flour,” says the recipe, to be rubbed into “¼lb lard”. This is the juncture at which I admit southern jessiedom.

Much as I have learned, in the last couple of years, to love lard – and dripping – using it in a cake is a step too far. So, butter instead.

And to translate everything into modern money, that’s 450g plain flour and 225g butter.

Once you’ve beaten those together – in a mixer in my case: all the bodybuilding of my younger years still hasn’t equipped me with a country housewife’s forearms – before adding 150g sugar (I used a soft demerara) a pinch of salt, two teaspoons of ground ginger and last, one and a half teaspoons of baking powder.

Into that, mix 150g of melted dark treacle: for some reason or other, lost in the mists of time, there was a jar of organic stuff in the cupboard, unopened.

Then, dissolve a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda into 150g of boiling water – and stir that into the mixture.

Decant everything into “a deep roasting tin” and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour.

The tin in my case was my largest enamel pie dish, buttered. The oven was set at 150˚C (fan).

I tested with a skewer after 30 minutes – and gave it another 10.

This is not a thing of beauty. It is not elegant. It lacks any finesse; although it came clean away from the dish easily, it crumbles even more easily.

But it is crisp on the outside, squidgy and sticky inside; dense and rich and yet not heavy; gloriously aromatic and, tasted together with a bit of Stilton (Lancashire or Cheshire would also work well) it is a thing of warming, comforting pleasure.

A perfect winter's day?

Winter sky over Hackney.

After a 12-day stint of work, with those trips to Sheffield and Scunthorpe forming part of that, this weekend could hardly have been  more welcome.

And what better way to start things off, after a long, restful sleep, than to find blue skies above and actual sun visible in the firmament.

It was, indeed, the sort of weather that made you feel that spring is not too far away – and to put a spring into your step.

Broadway Market was its usual self by the time I arrived, bustle beginning to build to the levels we've come to expect, but everyone seemed to be feeling the benefit of gloom lifted.

The now-regulation Saturday breakfast of a sausage roll from one of the stalls – a Cumberland sausage in real pastry – was enjoyed standing to one side, a confetti of crumbs tumbling to the ground.

Chats with Matthew and Trevor were appreciated during the shopping, and another at La Bouche with Arno, who was sporting a rather magnificent beret.

Shopping done and packed away, a stroll through the park followed, newly-planted trees bearing evidence to the belief of the council gardeners that the season is changing. There was even some warmth from the sun.

Winter jasmine.

Back at home, The Other Half was deliberating hanging a wash outside for a while, while the cats were begging to get out too, insisting that we had no decent excuses, because they could quite clearly see that it wasn’t wet or grey or snowy any more.

While they patrolled their territory, I went looking around mine.

The damp and gloom had halted my autumnal gardening exploits, yet the patch of soil that I had already sifted, in a bed that's part of the car park, has seen less weeds growing than that I hadn’t got to.

A valuable little lesson – quite obvious when you think about it, but also an indicator of just how unnaturally mild this winter has been.

Winter jasmine offered seasonal colour, while a neat, pale pink rose on a bush growing out of one of the other flats' gardens offered a rather more unseasonal sight.

The pyracantha shows new growth. The chives and garlic are reviving, as too are the sorrel and mint.

Crocuses and other bulbs are well on the way. The only bulbs that seem reticent are the snowdrops.

Back inside and time to use up a celeriac that’s been sitting around for a fortnight.

Two small onions were peeled, sliced and softened in butter, joined by a sliced stick of celery and then the drained celeriac, which had been cut up and was resting in a bowl of acidulated water.

To that was added some stock: when I need a stock cube, I use Kallo’s Just Bouillon – a rare one, in that it doesn’t include palm oil, the harvesting of which is damaging orangutan habitats.

And then it was left to simmer away while I watched the first half of Manchester City’s FA Cup fourth-round tie at Stoke.

At the break, it was given a bit of a blitzing with the hand blender, before having a little cream added to finish it.

And then it was served with plenty of black pepper and a grating of nutmeg.

And jolly pleasing it was too: soothing and warming and gentle: perfect for such an afternoon.

The invigorated mood was not harmed when City went through, thanks to a late goal from the wonderful Pablo Zabaleta; goodness, how many right-backs could have finished so well? Zabman is total class.

And then a feeling that I wanted to bake. But what? I’d made no plans.

However, there was enough in the cupboards to make a version of my mother’s ginger sponge.

The recipe is in an old notebook, precisely copied down some 30 years ago, in imperial measurements.

I have made one or two adjustments over the years – not least substituting butter for the marg my mother used: I remember the pale yellow and white stripes of Stork packets.

Given what else was available, I also took a piece of stem ginger and chopped it finely, adding it at the end of mixing.

My mother also used to add 75ml of milk, but I don’t think it needs it. She also just used ordinary sugar.

It’s not a light sponge, like a Victoria – but with all the Golden Syrup used, it never could be. What it has is density and bags of flavour.

Make sure you use a good-quality ground ginger. The stem ginger really gives it an extra kick.

So, melt 200g Golden Syrup, 75g of unsalted butter and 50g of unrefined demerara and melt gently together.

In the meantime, sift 200g of self-raising flour, add a pinch of salt and two heaped teaspoons of ground ginger.

Into this, add one beaten egg, and then add the melted syrup/sugar/butter and beat in.

This was where I added the stem ginger, before decanting the lot into a lined baking tin.

And then bake for 45 minutes at 150˚C (fan).

To check it’s cooked, press a skewer into the centre and, if it comes away clean, the cake is done.

Remove from your tin onto a rack and allow to cool.

Maybe it isn’t the most sophisticated piece of baking, but it was readily doable from what I had in and, in that, answered a need.

That there’s less than half left attests to it packing a punch of warming ginger.

And then a Poirot stack on the TV, followed by haggis from Andy, with tatties and, if not neeps, then crushed swede, carrot and parsnip, before top-notch animation in Robots – imagine, a Hollywood film that, in effect, is damning of the beauty/cosmetic surgery industry!

All in all, was that perhaps close to being a perfect day?

A cake yule never forget

There’s an alchemy to what goes on in the kitchen; a mystery that is perhaps particularly relevant at this time of year.

Take egg whites.

Transparent and slippery when they slide from a cracked shell; opaque and white, stiff and yet airy after being whipped. Such a transformation.

The day before Christmas Eve, my cold in full flow after having returned with a vengeance, it was time to finally roll up sleeves and get going with the Yule log I’d long promised The Other Half, since he doesn’t like any cake containing dried fruit.

There’s been a vast Swiss roll tin in the cupboard for a couple of years now, but procrastination is an effective shield against new culinary challenges.

So, after having found flu drugs in the medicine cabinet and with Annie Lennox singing carols in the background, I sat down with caffeine and the recipes and notes I'd printed out last week.

First, there was the Nigella version.

“I can’t promise it’s a doddle,” she had written – words that, in my mind’s eye, I could see being delivered to the accompaniment of a certain look to camera, “but it works easily”.

And it certainly looked far from difficult. Indeed, the main question seems to be the rolling bit.

While searching for general advice, I’d come across Felicity Cloake’s recent article in her Guardian ‘how to make the perfect’ series, where she tests a number of recipes and then comes up with a perfect one.

The key here was the rolling question.

Nigella – like Delia – let’s the cake cool before rolling. Research suggested that this was not best, and Cloake's own tests backed this up.

In the event, I used Nigella’s recipe – with a tweak or two. Besides, her amounts were more realistic for the tin I have than any that Cloake used.

You start by separating half a dozen medium eggs, then whisking those whites until they peak, before adding 50g of caster sugar and mixing a little more. Then a teaspoon of vanilla extract goes in, along with 50g of sifted cocoa powder.

In another bowl, the yolks are whisked up with 100g caster sugar, until they’re the texture of a mousse and a lovely, pale yellow.

A couple of “dollops” of the white mix are added and beaten in, before the rest of the egg white mixture is carefully folded in.

Everything goes into your carefully-lined Swiss roll tin and is popped into an oven (160˚C fan) for 20 minutes.

Once removed, it gets a moment or two to rest – and then comes the bit everyone dreads.

Turn it out onto more baking paper and gently roll up, before leaving to cool.

There are mentions of clean tea towels and dustings of icing sugar. I managed thus: a little icing sugar was sprinkled on the sponge, then it was covered with another large sheet of baking paper.

The inverted cooling rack went on top and then it was quite easy to turn over. The tray came away easily and it was only a matter of taking my time to ease the bottom layer of baking paper away.

It doesn’t matter if you tear or lose a bit of cake – you’re going to cover those.

Using the baking paper that’s now beneath your sponge, you slowly roll the thing away from you. The paper is a great help, because you can use that rather than putting pressure on the warm sponge.

Slip the paper out from underneath and leave on the cooling rack.

Later, it was a case of bashing up 175g of 70% cocoa solids chocolate as the sound of Bing Crosby singing that song drifted through the flat, before melting gently over a pan of hot water.

Butter and icing sugar was beaten together, before the melted chocolate joined them, once it had cooled a little.

Now at this juncture, Nigella calls for another teaspoon of vanilla essence to be added to the mix, but I decided to take a leaf out of Cloake’s book experiments.

I split approximately a third of the mixture into another bowl and added a substantial squeeze of chestnut purée, then spread that over the unrolled cake.

By this time, we’d hit Jingle Bells – in French – on The Other Half’s Christmas playlist. And people imagine he’s all ‘bah humbug’ at this time of year.

Once the filled sponge was rolled back up, I cut off a piece from each end and placed them alongside it, at angles, on a silver cake board.

Then it was a question of plastering over the chocolate buttercream mix – with vanilla now added. There was a massive amount of the mixture and it wasn’t quite as easy as you might imagine, because the sponge is really quite delicate.

Next, take a skewer and try to make it look like a log. A line here; a whorl there. I realised that it’s a long time since I drew cartoon logs, but it sort of came back to me.

Then dust with sieved icing sugar and decorate with whatever you’ve got available. I’d managed, only a few days ago, to get my hands on some sugar flowers, a little Christmas tree and a robin, so on they went (the tree on a sugar-dusted ‘hump’ of extra buttercream to one side of the cake itself.

And there it was – my first Yule log. Looking suitably Yuleish. Even by my standards, this is not health food – but it is Christmas, after all!

Then onto the day’s next task – making orange dust and lemon dust. There was to be no repeat of last year’s debacle, when I misread the temperature as centigrade when it was actually fahrenheit.

A small orange and a lemon were sliced as thinly as possible – oh, the value of a new, really, really sharp Zwilling Henckels paring knife – and went on to a lined baking tray, to spend the hours n the oven at 100˚C (fan).

They’re then blitzed (separately), each with a pinch of sugar and a touch of salt, before being sieved into small containers, where they keep very nicely for some time.

And that was entirely enough prep for one day: there’s still Christmas Eve to go, and plenty more to do. But that can wait.