To pipe

I wanted a challenge, I chose piping. And crème pâtissière, but more of that later. I haven’t ‘done’ piping before. I feel the majority of baking enthusiasts have a broader experience in this field because of this god awful obsession with American style cupcakes. To be perfectly honest, I rather dislike them. I am aware this is a huge generalisation BUT they’re overly sweet, the icing to sponge ratio is way out and frankly, I don’t want to eat something that looks like its topping has been formed from what comes out the arse of a My Little Pony.

Because of my distaste for the sickly, pretty swirls of coloured sugar I don’t tend to bake them but if I do, I certainly don’t bedeck them with swirls of piped icing. My loathing is only my own enemy because now I am ignorant in the world of piping.

To rectify this situation I came upon a baked good that would challenge me in a variety of ways: Éclairs.


Éclairs are made from choux pastry, something which in itself I have never found difficult to make, however offering your little buns to the AGA gods is a different matter. I searched all over the internet for people’s experiences with AGAs and choux pastry and the only thing I found was one woman bemoaning her AGA for destroying every attempt. Great.

And so to Mary.... I checked her AGA book and yes there were instructions for baking éclairs so I felt safe. The actual recipe I wanted to use however was one of Raymond Blanc’s. Raymond’s choux pastry and crème pâtissière recipe {http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolate_clairs_03600}, James Martin’s icing recipe {http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/classic_chocolate_clair_72793} and Mary Berry’s cooking instructions. What was there to go wrong?

The actual piping was not too bad. I think my choux pastry was slightly too runny to achieve a perfect form but we live and learn. The runniness did make getting the pastry into the bag and keeping it there long enough to ready myself to pipe a bit of a messy mission; choux pastry may have ended up getting in many other places than the tray but a sufficient amount made it on there in some semblance of an éclair shape.

When things were still clean

Not too appalling

Now I’m not one to play the blame game but Mary screwed me over a tad. Those even and uniform bakes she goes on about on The Bake Off were not what came out of my oven following her instructions.

Check out that difference!

Perhaps I should have turned the tray around mid-bake, but then that could have caused them to not fulfill their puff potential. Mary’s lucky I had the good sense to check on them 5 minutes before she told me to anyway because in another 5 minutes those little guys could have been sad charred stumps laid out on my tray.

Judging the first tray on their looks (it’s a cruel, superficial world), I put the next batch slightly lower and kept my eye on them (rather difficult through a cast iron door) and they came out much happier.
Tentatively following Mary’s instructions to the next step, all éclairs got slashed and put in the Simmering Oven to dry out, no further harm came to them.

I must admit, on seeing the mixed bag of success of the first batch of éclairs, the old Beth would probably have had a mini meltdown. A painful memory is flashing before my eyes in which a failed attempt to melt white chocolate caused me to burst into tears. It was late at night, I was tired, my class at school were expecting delightful treats the following day; it all was a bit too much. But I am not (usually) that sensitive anymore. I would soldier on with these éclairs, even if the next thing to be made was something I’d never made before.

Crème pâtissière: a pastry cream. And you know what, it’s surprisingly easy to make. Just make sure you let the heated milk cool slightly before you add it to the egg yolk, sugar, flour, cornflour mix unless you’re going for the scrambled egg custard variety.

Heat the vanilla milk, slowly add it to the rest of the mixed ingredients, whisking constantly. Return it to the pan, bring it up to the boil, again with the whisking, then let it simmer for another 2 minutes or so until it has thickened. And then you’re done.
Unless you want to make it better and flavour it with chocolate, which I did.
Apparently pastry cream disgustingly forms a skin if you leave it out in the open, so mine got a layer of cling film patted upon it and left to cool.

Not actually scary to make

Heads up; because I made the crème pâtissière correctly it was much more fun to pipe than the choux pastry. So, do things right first time and it’s swell.

And if anyone has any doubts, pastry cream is ridiculously delicious, I for one am never filling an éclair or profiterole with cream ever again.

Much more fun to pipe

Doing all that took some time, I’m not going to lie. So when I had a near finished product before me I was awfully excited to get the icing done and make these little fellas look presentable, i.e. burnt bits hidden.

I really did do everything right for James’ fondant chocolate topping. But it just didn’t taste good (Note: always try the icing before it goes anywhere near the rest of your food). So I wasn’t going to encase my éclairs in a sorry excuse for a chocolate icing after I’d piped twice to achieve them.

So a second icing was made thanks to the BBC GoodFood website and it was a delight, thank god.

They do look quite impressive

And no, I did not pipe it on.

Even the dud ones look good. Icing; a poor bake's best friend.

Sausages are for life, not just for Christmas

I fear that, because of the way it was marketed, the glory of this recipe has been slightly overlooked. Having first presented itself to me on Nigel Slater’s 12 Tastes of Christmas programme last year, declaring to be an alternative to pigs in blankets (a stupid thing to suggest because obviously we all know there is no alternative to those badboys) and something to pass around at a party, I thought Hey this might be a grown up thing to try out.
Original recipe can be found here: http://www.nigelslater.com/Archive_view.asp?nArchive_ID={A82EB504-361C-416B-8150-253F894952BB}

Upon cooking it however, I realised this was no party food. I would not be sharing this with lingering guests who never know what to do with the cocktail stick post sausage consumption. And I would not be eating it only at Christmas. The rise in cocktail sausage and cranberry sales outside of the Christmas period in my local supermarket most definitely have been caused by my obsession.

The reason this party food has turned into a full on meal for me is essentially because of my intense love of red onions, I can’t get enough of them. Ergo, I slightly bastardized Nigel’s ‘sticky glaze’ version by upping the red onion quantity significantly. Two small red onions may have become 4-5 obscenely giant ones. But by doing so, the dish turns into some kind of insanely quick hot chutney with the added benefit of meat already incorporated. I truly cannot think of anything better.


A sufficient amount

Red onions, sausages (no need to get silly small ones, we’re big boys now), cranberry jelly and cranberries - it really is shockingly easy to make, almost to the point of laziness.

You can eat whatever you want with it, most of the time for me it's with a salad; a continuation on the zero effort meal front. BUT by golly if you want ruddy* deliciousness in a bowl, add some crumbled stilton to it. Seriously, the creamy saltiness goes so well with the sticky, sharp and sweet cranberry sausages, it’s amazing. Do it.


Necessary stilton lurking in the background

*Note on usage of ruddy: I have decided for the sake of potential future employers that I should make a concerted effort not to swear on this blog. Unsure how long that’ll last.

Nottingham Bound

This weekend we took my youngest sister, a joyous amount of suitcases and a multitude of bags charmingly overfilled so that the handles were rendered ineffective, to Nottingham. The occasion? University: First Year.

On momentous occasions such as these, it is a tradition in our family that a delightful dinner is created the night before the day of leaving. With five sisters, there is a lot of room to have a variety of ‘sisterly relationships’, but as it happens I rather like this one so I thought I would give her a good send off. The food of choice to represent a ‘new era’ for my sister and also, more importantly, the real start of my blog? Salmon en croûte and chocolate pavlova.

To the fish...

This recipe, a Gordon one which you can find here http://www.redonline.co.uk/food/recipes/salmon-en-croute, is ridiculously easy. The only real pain is skinning the salmon, unless this is something you frequently do and/or actually know how to do properly, unlike myself. However, if this task does fill you with dread I would ask you to think of me when I first attempted this recipe and only remembered to skin the fish after I had buttered him up all good and proper. If you’re not covered in lemony, herby butter, you will do fine.

My hands also became sore as soon as they (figuratively) saw the raw fish, I am unsure if this is a ‘thing’. Perhaps it is something to be researched and not discussed on here.

Gordon’s recipe details some exact and some unhelpfully inexact measurements. I refer you to the ‘generous handful’ and ‘small handful’ amounts of herbs. As someone with inexplicably large hands for a female, these measurements always throw me a bit. Is this a scrunched fist hand? An open palm? How high can a pile of basil leaves go upon a steady hand? Generally when I see such instructions I just think, ‘Oh okay, quite a bit’. So that is what I did, to a delicious result thank goodness.
But to the exact measurements, most specifically that of the salmon and the pastry, I would be so bold as to say ignore them slightly. Get as much salmon as you want / can afford (it is rather pricey), I believe the amount I used was nearly 700g and that was more than enough for 5 people so I’m unsure how hungry Gordon’s guests were. I would also recommend buying a pack of ready rolled shortcrust pastry - your work is done for you.

For AGA baking, after having chilled your gift wrapped salmon, place the tray on the bottom rung of the Roasting Oven and bake for 20-25 minutes per Gordon’s instructions.

So delish

The chocolate pavlova recipe is courtesy of Nigella Lawson, as featured in her book Forever Summer. It can also be found on her website, http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/chocolate-raspberry-pavlova-200. You really can’t go wrong with Nigella when wanting some sort of indulgent chocolate dessert. However, as it was a special occasion I decided to make the pavlova slightly more interesting by adding chopped toasted hazelnuts into the mixture along with the chocolate. Plus, a chocolate and hazelnut concoction is rather befitting to the blog’s namesake — meant to be.

Shiny and stiff = all set for the additions

Upon reading the recipe I suddenly realised that, despite eating many a pavlova/meringue based dessert, I had never actually made one. So this is truly an account from an absolute pavlova beginner. My findings: it’s easy enough. Just make sure you whisk the egg whites into some good peaks before adding the sugar, a spoonful at a time, ensuring each load is incorporated before you chuck in the next one.

For conventional ovens Nigella has the answers to your baking questions, but for that eternally hot beast that sits in my kitchen I had to seek out Mary Berry’s advice. Position your pavlova on a grid shelf on the floor of the Roasting Oven for 3-4 minutes. Then transfer it to the Simmering Oven for 1¼-1½ hours.

Aside from cream and fruit, Nigella advocates coarsely grated chocolate to top her pavlova. No offence to Nigella but I decided to up the chocolate stakes and make David Lebovitz’s Salted Butter Chocolate Sauce that I had been coveting for some time now, which can be found on his website here http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2013/09/salted-butter-chocolate-sauce-recipe/.

Different but delightful

I halved his ingredients because I didn’t think I really needed 500ml of an excuse to eat liquid chocolate every time I opened the fridge for 2 weeks. Whilst my sauce was delicious it did not look like the sauce in David’s photos, so perhaps halving it buggered up the consistency slightly. Guess I shall have to try the full amount next time juuuust to check, ergh what an inconvenience!

A word on this slightly altered dessert, the hazelnuts make the entire pavlova take on a Ferrero Rocher feel. If you know someone who is a fan, I would create this but go mental and add a layer of Nutella beneath to cream to make the transformation of dessert/delightful chocolate ball complete.

My sister was suitably enamoured with the food and an extra piece of pavlova made its way up to Nottingham with us.

Welcome to Spoon in the Nutella, a blog in which I hope to share my culinary exploits great and small, successes and failures. There shall be no shame in this exploratory food space; all posts will be horrifically honest and accompanied by my less than expert photography.

I’m Beth, a recent graduate with a lot of time on my hands and a lot of love for baking. The title of this blog is not, as may first appear, an instruction in order to improve a lacklustre chocolate cake recipe. Nor is it the confession of a sneaky Nutella thief — I must admit the whole chocolate on bread thing always slightly disturbed me. It is in actual fact an event which usually causes me to bake. To explain; my mother is in possession of an incredibly sweet tooth and if there so happens to be no delicious goods in the house she can be known to, not so subtly, wander over to the jam cupboard and surreptitiously procure a spoonful of the good stuff ( I cannot confirm if double dipping takes place, the event is too speedy).
Whilst this behaviour is probably extremely normal for most people, when I bear witness to it I get an increasing feeling of sadness that this is where she is getting her sweet kicks when I know something infinitely better (no offence Nutella) could be thrown together in a couple of hours. Yes, Nutella is an instant hit of chocolatey goodness but really, is there anything better than something freshly baked?

My mother’s chocolate habit is not the only reason for my baking habit. I love to bake but that love has only been allowed to develop because of my mother. All my life, we have always had a ‘baking cupboard’ and a ‘cooking chocolate drawer’ in the kitchen. Baking never had to be planned and shopped for in my house but could be done as desired, and with a talented mum and 5 other sisters under the same roof this happened rather a lot.

My weapon of choice to help me along this blogging adventure is the big ‘ol beast of kitchens, the 4 oven AGA.

Drying washing - amongst its many talents

In its full glory

Whilst an AGA does magically make all food taste that bit better - once you’ve had AGA toast you can’t go back - it also forces you (well it does me) to research and cross compare recipes. With 4 ovens of differing temperatures the AGA does not completely adhere to the conventional gas mark/°Celsius cooking instructions; sometimes I do just shove a cake ‘somewhere’ in the baking oven and simply hope that something edible will eventually come out. Looking at a ‘normal’ recipe and then frantically trying to find out if Mary Berry - the Queen of AGA cooking - has made something similar and what rung she cooks it at has made me rather obsessive about recipes in general. I now cannot just find, for example, a shortbread recipe and go on and bake it. I have to research many other shortbread recipes and see how and why they differ and then test them all out or create a hybrid version. It is here that I would like this blog to intersect with my frankly anal attitude to baking, it shall be a space for me to explore and test a variety of recipes and document my findings. Hopefully, it will also force me to try new things, I must admit that I have rather shied away from all things pastry, bread and custard based so clearly tackling them in a very public space is the logical conclusion.

Oh, I will document savoury cooking too sometimes - can’t have cake for dinner everyday!

Where to start...