Chocolate chilli cupcakes: unexpected star of English tea party

Chocolate chilli cupcakes, mystery treacle offering, jug of the Norse Goddess's sangria. The cupcakes are sitting on a cakestand I inherited from my Grandad.

We hosted a tea party yesterday, in honour of our visiting friends, the Norse God and Goddess. It was the fourth of July so it seemed like a fitting time to get some friends together - what with it being Alice in Wonderland Day and all :) This is a very well known English event, which I had been planning to celebrate for precisely two days, ever since I saw a poster advertising it in the Covered Market in Oxford. Oxford is, of course, the home of Alice, since C. S. Lewis was a don there, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, the site of the famous Treacle Well is near the city [interlude: Roger Federer has just won Wimbledon. During the course of the match I have moderated some essays, read a magazine, read the manual for my new camera, downloaded some pictures and made some bread. But winning Wimbledon sounds pretty good as well]. It was a coincidence that the (Canadian) Norse Goddess had come up with treacle as her first thought for an English tea party, but a happy one. She associated it with the Famous Five, so we were covering lots of children's literature bases.

The Norse Goddess gets creative (and personalised) with the cupcakes

I'll write more about how we turned the treacle theme into reality later, but this post is about the unexpected and not very English star of the tea party - the chocolate chilli cupcakes. This was inspired by the very first entry on my 2009 Cupcake Calendar, so I've been waiting a while to make it. My fellow dairy-reducing friend Vicki has shamed me into also reducing the amount of dairy products I use to bake for other people , so I didn't actually use the recipe from the calendar, but instead adapted the chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World. The calendar recipe called for the addition of chipotle chilli powder to the batter; we didn't have that, so I used regular chilli powder, and some of the sauce from a jar of chipotle chillis in adobo in lieu of some of the vanilla extract. I did go with the orange frosting the calender suggested, just using vegan marge instead of butter.

The Norse Goddess's over-sized butterfly bun (verdict: nom nom - in a Canadian accent)

The cakes were a big hit. There was a good hit of chilli - everyone noticed it, but it wasn't enough to make your eyes water (I'd been a bit worried about this). Our poor friend Neil, who got ambushed by the salt on the margarita-ish cupcakes I made a few weeks ago was also surprised by the chilli, but it doesn't seem to have been enough to put him off my baking, fortunately. No one complained that they tasted of soya milk either, so thank you Vicki for inspiring me to ban the cow's milk and butter :) The Norse Goddess and I got creative with the icing, and when I realised that she'd never had a butterfly bun, I turned one of the extras into her own little English fusion treat.

Cupcake ready for nomming, modelled by Mike

Our Alice party was a lot of fun, and was only slighted marred by the odd raindrop, which just served to push us inside to watch the Wimbledon women's final. The Norse Goddess made us up some sangria, which I've just realised I was drinking without diluting with lemonade, and The Scientist repeated his sandwich-making triumph from the cricket tea. His egg mayonnaise got particular mention in dispatches. The Norse deities were able sandwich minions, and the Norse God made the decorative bunting (environmentally friendly - made from Sunday newspaper colour supplements). Everyone was happy apart from Bamber the dog, who was kept confined to the car to avoid cat spooking. He didn't get a cupcake (naturally - chocolate being very bad for dogs indeed), but he did get a walk once the tea had gone down a little.

Eco bunting (note Andy Murray on third flag from the right!)

Chocolate chilli cupcakes (adapted from Vegan Cupcakes...)
Made 12 fairy cakes and two big cupcakes with the leftovers

1 cup soya milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp adobo sauce from a jar of chipotle chillis
1 cup plain white flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp chilli powder

1. Preheat oven to 175 C and line a muffin tin with paper liners
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the soya milk and vinegar and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, vanilla and adobo sauce, and beat. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and salt. Add in two batches to the wet ingredients and beat until there are no large lumps. Add the chilli powder and stir to combine well.
3. Pour into the cupcake liners, filling three quarters of the way (this will create quite flat tops for icing. If you want to make butterfly buns, put a bit more in to get a domed top). Baking 18-20 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Transfer to a rack and allow to cool before frosting.

Chocolate orange frosting (from the 2009 Cupcake Calendar)
1 cup icing sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 Tbsp Grand Marnier (or Tia Maria)
1/3 cup butter or vegan margarine

Blend all of the ingredients together in a processor. The instructions said to sift the sugar but I didn't bother. Pipe the frosting onto the cooled cupcakes. Or, slice the top of the domed cupcakes and halve the cut-off top. Frost the top of the cupcake and then balance the two halves on top so that they look like wings (see photo)

Happy birthday with jelly and ice cream!

It's blog party time again, and this time we're celebrating Stephanie's birthday! I immediately started thinking of kiddie party food, but for once it was the drink which came to me first. A few weeks ago we went to a local food fair with our friends Vicki and Paul, and saw a company selling old fashioned drinks in old fashioned bottles. I was intrigued by the sarsaparilla but Vicki and The Scientist were both smitten by cream sodas and bought a bottle each. I've only once ever had cream soda at a friend's house - we never had it at home, I'd never heard of it before that day, and I've never had it since. I'd assumed it was an American drink but Vicki says she used to have it as a child at her grandma's house, where it was served with milk (even she thinks this was weird in retrospect, though who knows, perhaps it's delicious). I remembered that I'd liked the taste I'd had all those years ago but had taste-memory of something very sweet and artificial. The drink we bought at the food festival was a very superior version - still sweet, but full of lots of other subtle flavours (vanilla's the only one I can remember but there were definitely more!). A few days later I got round to googling how it was made, and came up with this recipe. It's a cinch! Although possibly one of those drinks you'd rather not know how to make - water, sugar, vanilla, and a surprising pinch of yeast. Shake it up, let it stand, refrigerate, drink. And it tasted just like the artificial but fun drink I remembered from my childhood! I served it in this glass because it reminded me of the glasses my grandparents used to serve shandy in.


Now, what finger food to serve with my cream soda? Well, cream made me think ice cream, and ice cream made me think jelly. And jelly reminded me of the rest of the packet of vegetarian gelatin I still had sitting mournfully in the cupboard after my failed marshmallow attempt. I read various recipes but in the end winged it a bit as I was adapting it to use the veggie stuff, which (so the packet says) has different properties from the piggy-based one. Essentially I dissolved some sugar in some water with some blackberries but then removed it from the heat and stirred in half a packet of the gelatin (it has to be mixed in to cold liquid). Then I returned it to the heat, boiled it, and took it off again. Then I watched it, nudged it with a spoon, wondered how soon it was supposed to show signs of setting, panicked, added more gelatin, returned it to the heat, boiled it and cooled it, and strained it into the funky little party glasses you see in the photo. I don't know whether it would have set with the original amount of gelatin but it certainly did with more, anyway. Science in the kitchen, eh - The Scientist would be proud (if it had a bit more rigour and a bit less randomness).


So happy birthday, Stephanie! Enjoy your jelly and (ice) cream soda!

Blog party 37: going retro

This month Stephanie from Dispensing Happiness has picked 'Retro' for the theme of her blog party. This gave me the perfect opportunity to make something from my copy of Victory Cookbook by Marguerite Patten. I found it in one of those remaindered bookshops several months ago and have read it quite extensively but haven't yet cooked any of the recipes. Marguerite Patten was a Home Economist at the Ministry of Food during the second world war and was responsible for coming up with and publicising new ways for families on the home front to cook cheaply and healthily. The cookbook covers the war years and after, since rationing didn't end in Britain until 1954, and includes lots of recipes, advice and cartoons published by the Ministry as well as notes from Marguerite on how rationing worked and changed. It's really interesting social history as well as a cookbook, so of course I find it fascinating. I'm particularly drawn to this period of history, and especially the experience of life in Britain. It's so easy to forget what our grandparents' generation went though, or to downplay it, and yet it was so utterly life-changing even for those at home. I find the famous war epitaph almost unbearably moving: 'When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today'. The Scientist's grandpa served in Burma during the war and when he died a few years ago, some elderly gentlemen from the Burma Star Association came to his funeral and recited that verse over the coffin as they stood to attention with the association's flag. It was very touching.


Anyway, this is all just to say that although I made my party offering in fun, it's something that makes me quite thoughtful. Since the party is a happy occasion though, I thought I would follow some of the suggestions for a children's victory party. VE and VJ day were celebrated with lots of street parties, and some of them were especially for children. Marguerite notes that some children tasted ice cream for the first time at those parties - it was rare in a time when most people didn't have a fridge. I didn't try the wartime ice cream recipe, but followed some of the suggestions for other tasty morsels - sandwiches and tarts.

I wanted to get really into the spirit of things, so I followed a bread recipe in the same book for my sandwiches. Bread wasn't rationed during the war itself, although it was afterwards, but it was scarce and expensive, as was flour. People were recommended to eke their flour out with oatmeal, so I used that to make up a quarter of the total amount of flour. Wartime flour was much coarser than modern flour, but I did use plain rather than bread flour since that wasn't on sale in the 1940s. I was expecting a bit of a brick of a loaf, but it was actually quite nice and fluffy and just tasted a little more wholemeal-like from the oatmeal.


So, bread made and sliced, I turned to the list of suggested sandwich fillings. A lot were potted meats and fish, so I chose a mixture of grated cheese and carrot, with a little bit of milk to moisten, and mock banana, which was mashed parsnip with banana essence and a little sugar (bananas weren't available at all during the war because of the shipping blockades). I didn't have banana essence so I used a bit of the liquid that frozen bananas leave behind when they defrost. It was sweet enough with that not to need extra sugar. I quite liked it, though I'm impressed with 1940s children if they were happy to have it on their sandwiches. Perhaps it just needed mashing a bit more, or maybe they all went for the potted shrimp and jam ones instead. I hope they also got sandwiches with tops - I ate mine open and the carrot and cheese filling kept falling off. I suspect this is my fault not the sandwich topping, and if you can't make a bit of mess with your tea party when war's over, when can you?


My book suggested a selection of cakes, tarts and biscuits to go with the sandwiches and I selected some tarts as I was interested to see how wartime pastry turned out. Fats and sugar were in short supply - as were eggs - only 1 per week at the most, and many of the recipes call for reconstituted dried eggs instead. My pastry didn't need eggs though I think the proportion of fat is a bit lower than usual. I filled some with jam and turned the others into Maids of Honour - another recipe in the book which I hadn't heard of before, and which consist of a little jam topped with a margarine, sugar and breadcrumb mix. They were quick and easy and were perfect child-sized finger food. The Scientist is a jam tart fan and he liked them very much and thought that the Maids of Honour had a certain treacle-tart quality to them.

Of course I need a drink to send to Stephanie's party as well, and the book was pretty clear on what to serve: lemon or orange squash. I can't really even imagine what the end of the war must have meant to people who'd lived through it but making my party entry has definitely made me think a lot about cooking with wartime restrictions. I plan to try out a few more recipes in the future, so expect to see Pete Potato and his friends featuring a few more times!



Wartime bread (from Victory cookbook)
450g plan flour (you can sub in a quarter of this with oatmeal
heaping 1/4 tsp salt
300ml water
2 tsp dried yeast

Sift flour and salt into a mixing bowl. Heat the water until just warm. Add yeast and sugar to the water, top with a sprinkling of the flour and leave until frothy (12-15 mins)

Make a well in the centre of the flour, pour in the yeast liquid and mix well. Turn out on to a floured board and knead until the dough fills in a hole made by your finger. Shape into a ball and return to the oiled bowl. Leave in a warm place to prove until doubled in size [I did this in the fridge overnight]. Turn the dough out and knock back. Form into a round loaf or place in a loaf tin and leave to prove again until it's almost doubled in size. Cover it very lightly with a cloth. This stage will take 45-60 mins at room temperature.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 22C/425F. Bake for 35-40 mins until the base sounds hollow when tapped.

Maids of Honour (from Victory Cookbook)
Pastry: [I halved this quantity but still made 12 little tarts]
6 oz self raising flour
pinch salt
1 1/2 - 2 oz margarine
water, to mix

Sift flour and salt into a bowl. Rub in the marge, add enough water to make a firm rolling consistency. Roll out and cut into circles. Place one circle in each indentation in a fairy cake tin.

Filling [for 12-15 tarts]:
A little jam
1 oz margarine
1-2 oz sugar
1/2 tsp almond essence
3 oz fine breadcrumbs
2 tbsp milk

Top the pastry with a little jam. Cream the margarine, sugar and almond essence together, add the breadcrumbs and milk. Spoon the top over the jam and bake in the centre of a moderately hot oven 15-20 minutes until firm and golden

Rah, pimms

It's summer. It's Wimbledon. It's time for Pimm's. After looking interestedly at the inevitable displays of Pimm's in the supermarket every summer for the last six years or so, I finally bought a bottle today, and we're having a glass right now as an aperitif before going out for dinner. I served it in champagne flutes to try and look posh, with the traditional mint, cucumber and strawberries floated on the top, but I read in the leaflet that came with the bottle that actually it should be served in a highball glass. The reason that neither of us knew how it should be served is because we've almost always encountered it in a plastic pint glass before. I know, classy. The Scientist and I both did our degrees at Oxbridge, where no occasion in the summer term ('Trinity' if you went to the sensible university, 'Easter' if you went to the crazy one in the Fens) was complete without more Pimm's than you should ever drink in one sitting. Croquet on the quads, watching the rowing by the river, finishing Finals; all were toasted with plastic pint glasses of Pimm's. My undergraduate college even had a Pimm's officer to make sure that every finishing finalist got their half bottle allowance. All very Brideshead, I know, but as you long as you keep your tongue in your cheek and your best post-modernist ironic mortarboard on, the Oxbridge experience is something to be relished and looked back on with fondness. Now we're going out for sushi, which probably isn't the traditional post-Pimm's cuisine, but as I said - everything is improved with a glass of the summer nectar. Anyone for croquet?

Cheers! Note my thriving rhubarb, squash and blueberry plants in the background. I'm so proud!

Chocolate dipping kebabs - or, can't talk, dipping

So this is the post which was meant to feature the marshmallows I was writing about. I will update what happened to my second and third attempts later, but suffice to say that they are not featuring in this little dish after all. Evil little critters. It's a shame they haven't co-operated because they have missed out on a royal treat. The theme of Stephanie's cocktail party this month is chocolate, you see, and I've gone for mini fruit (and not marshmallow) kebabs with chocolate dipping sauce. To be honest, I'm too busy eating hot drippy chocolate off bright juicy strawberries and lovely banana slices to care about the lack of marshmallow. The only trouble is that Stephanie may need a new carpet after her party as the sauce is quite runny. In every other respect though, it's just perfect, and to make things even better (or perhaps, slightly less bad) the sauce is from a Cooking Light recipe. So you can eat twice as much :)


My accompanying drink is a fruity cocktail - orange and rhubarb. A strange combination in a drink perhaps, but I fancied something fruity to accompany the kebabs, and had saved the rhubarb juices from the last time I stewed some for breakfast. And on balance I think that alcohol and this runny sauce might not be a good combination as far as mess is concerned...

Rich chocolate sauce (from Cooking Light)
Ingredients:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 cup fat-free milk
1 tablespoon butter
1 1/2 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation:

Combine sugar and cocoa in a small saucepan; stir in milk and butter. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Cook 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in chocolate and vanilla, stirring until chocolate melts. Serve warm or let stand 10 minutes to thicken.

Yields 1 1/2 cups [the amount in the picture was half of this recipe]

serving size: 2 tablespoons

Nutritional info [as calculated by Cooking Light]

CALORIES 73(36% from fat); FAT 2.9g (sat 1.7g,mono 1g,poly 0.1g); IRON 0.7mg; CHOLESTEROL 3mg; CALCIUM 32mg; CARBOHYDRATE 12.9g; SODIUM 21mg; PROTEIN 1.7g; FIBER 1.3g

Buffy bites

After failing to make Stephanie from Dispensing Happiness's street food cocktail party last month I'm pleased to be back on track for this month's event - a Buffy Bash! I've never seen a whole episode of Buffy though I sat through the film that preceded the series once, but I'm not sure you can be a student in the 1990s without absorbing Buffy-culture. Especially not if you live with as big a sci-fi fan as The Scientist. I do know, though, that Buffy was written by Joss Whedon, who also wrote Firefly and the film Serenity, which I have seen or I think The Scientist would have sued for (non)divorce. I did quite like them, actually - I like the engineer character (I've forgotten her name and can't ask The Scientist because he is taking part in his first online poker game and I don't want to be accused of breaking his concentration). Anyway, I thought of going down the pink and girly route for the blog party, which seems to be Buffy's trademark (who is called Buffy anyway - is it a nickname?). But in the end I went for Slayer Tombstones with blood-red relish and anti-vampire garlic dip.

I always have more difficulty thinking of drinks to take along to Stephanie's parties. I'm not a big drinker and our 'cocktail cabinet' is somewhat random. I'm quite pleased with what I came up with though - Nosferatu's bane (The Scientist came up with that one just now in a brief break from play). I should say that I'm pleased with the idea - the reality tasted absolutely disgusting and I would not recommend that Stephanie pass it around her guests unless she wants it to be her last cocktail party. I found it on this website where it was listed as a natural hay fever remedy. I hope it does something useful as it certainly serves no agreeable purpose as a drink. It consisted of water which had been boiled with garlic cloves, mixed with half that quantity of cider vinegar, and some honey (if you actually want to try it, I'd go for a LOT of honey). It looked a lot like a nice glass of wine and I kept almost being tempted to try it, but one small sip left me reeling from vinegar fumes so I'm afraid it didn't last much longer than its photography pose.

Still, it was good fun and the tombstones were great, as were both the dips. The garlic one was a new invention - I bought a jar of garlic relish at the weekend, and we just mixed it with some Greek yogurt. We'll be revisiting that one - though perhaps without the cocktail. We'll take our chances with Nosferatu.