Posted on 12/15/2017 4:39:44 PM PST by Jamestown1630
While enduring a ‘bug’ this week that left me unable to do much but sleep or sit in front of the TV, I happened upon Clarissa Dickson Wright’s series, ‘Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner’, which you can find on YouTube, and which is a really interesting history of how our 'three squares', and the ways we partake of them, have evolved over time.
In the Lunch episode, she featured a pasty (yes, no 'r') crust design, executed by food scholar Ivan Day. This was so beautiful, I had to find the design, and know more about it.
On the way, I found some interesting stuff – including Day's great website on historic food:
http://www.historicfood.com/portal.htm
The pasty design seems to have been derived from Edward Kidder’s ancient ‘Receipts of pastry and cookery, for the use of his scholars’, published in 1720 (you can still buy a copy on Amazon ;-):
http://www.historicfood.com/Edward%20Kidders%20Lamb%20Pasty.htm
I’m not personally a fan of British pasties; but it seems to me that we could decorate our sweet or savory pies just as beautifully – it just takes practice, and starting small! And you don’t need cutters to do this; just find a design, make a cardboard cutout of it, and find a sharp knife to cut the pastry to each of the shapes; then do some detail on the pieces.
Food52 has a lot of starter ideas for ‘fancying up’ your pie:
https://food52.com/blog/8744-9-ways-to-fancy-up-your-pies
-JT
That looks delicious...My son loves egg nog, and he would be in “hog heaven” if I make this for him. Thank you :)
Pudding file eh? Not only a good cook but an organized one! I suppose I should add “Organize Recipes” to my New Years Resolutions ;)
Exactly - the wee size of any grater will work. I have a microplaner that is the easiest thing to use and produces the finest powder, but it’s not necessary. Just have to be cautious with graters that have the more protuding sharpie thingies - the little nutmegs can be hard to hold onto when using those. With the microplaner, I can get down to using up all but a sliver of the nut. (is it a nut?)
I baked the orange batter ones yesterday, but darned if none of them rised out of the pan. So I didn’t get to sample it. The others needed the bottom rounded parts cut off so I got to sample ;)
Here’s the recipes - I did post them before but figured it’s easier to repost than find them. I think I am on here too much....it wasn’t that long ago and I couldn’t find them in the last 3 pages...
Here’s 3 options, the last is a gingerbread. I’ve read a dense cake works best with the little molds.
The first has a link to a page with pictures for the silicone pan. I converted that one to US measurements below.
Cozy Village Cakes https://www.icedjems.com/2012/12/christmas-village-cakes/
note - this one I did sample and it was yummy. It looks plain, but the vanilla flavor was strong (I likely added extra!) and it wasn’t sickeningly sweet. Just right, IMO.
3 1/8 cup Plain Flour
2 Tsp Baking Powder
1 1/2 Tsp Salt
1 cup Milk
1 1/2 Tsp vanilla extract
2 cups sugar
1 cup Unsalted Butter or Margarine
4 Eggs
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Start by mixing your Butter and Sugar until fluffy. Next, add your eggs one a time until well combined. Next add a little milk and a little flour and mix well, repeat this until all of the milk and flour are in the mixed in. To finish, add the Vanilla, Salt and Baking Powder and mix a final time until you have a smooth batter. Grease the silicone Cake Mould and pour the cake batter in. Fill it nearly to the top, the mixture will rise so it doesn’t need to be completely full. Bake in the oven for approx 20-25 mins. Remove from the oven once cooked, don’t worry about any excess cake, as this can be trimmed off! Don’t remove the cakes from the mould until they are completely cooled - the cakes are much firmer once cooled, and thus less likely to break when removing them from the mould! Once completely cooled, simply stretch each cavity and push the cake out from the bottom. Trim the excess off, so your mini houses have a flat bottom. Sprinkle Icing sugar over the cakes and the details will pop out immediately! Alternatively you could decorate with piping details and sweets!
Snowy Village Cake Recipe, courtesy of Nordic Ware:
2 1/4 cups flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 cup plain yogurt or sour cream
1 cup butter, melted
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp orange extract
grated orange peel from 1 orange
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour Cozy Village Baking Pan; set aside (I used Baker’s Joy). Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a large bowl, combine yogurt (or sour cream), butter, eggs, vanilla and orange extract; beat on medium speed, scraping bowl often, until well blended. Add dry ingredients; blend on lowest speed, scraping bowl often, until well combined. Beat on medium speed 1 minute. Stir in orange peel. Spoon half of batter into prepared pan, filling each well 3/4 full. Tap pan onto countertop to release air bubbles. For best results, spread batter up to reach the top edges of each well, so it is slightly lower in the centers. Set remaining batter aside. Bake for 22-27 minutes, until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan. Invert cakes onto cooling rack and cool completely. Wash and dry out pan. Prepare pan as previously instructed. Repeat filling and baking procedure with remaining batter. Decorate as desired.
Makes 12 little cakes. I’m sure this would also make one large bundt cake.
Mini Gingerbread Bundt Cakes
Gingerbread cake
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsps ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 cup hot water
1/2 cup molasses (not blackstrap)
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
3 eggs + 2 yolks, @rt
1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, softened
Cinnamon sugar coating, combine:
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsps ground cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a mini bundt pan with flour-based baking spray (such as Baker’s Joy brand) or grease and flour, tapping out excess flour; set pan aside. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. In a small bowl, combine the molasses with the hot water. Cream the butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth. Add the brown sugar and beat until lightened, about 3 minutes. Beat in the eggs and yolks, adding one at a time and scraping down the bowl intermittently. Add the flour and molasses mixture alternately, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix until smooth. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, filling each cavity about 2/3 full. Gently drop the pan onto a work surface two times to remove any air pockets. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cake comes out clean. Let cakes cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Turn cakes out and dredge in cinnamon and sugar. This cake recipe also makes one standard size bundt cake or 12 little buildings.
I’ll have to send you a pic of my spice drawer ;) When we remodeled the kitchen, the cabinet upgrades were SO expensive that I opted out of most of them - except the spice drawer and the knife drawer and the kitchen cabinet lined with ... something waterproof.
I LOVE that spice drawer - i got it extra big and it held ALL my spices (and I got to go buy a few more, LOL).
The village cakes thing was a comparision - Yaelle got a metal pan and I got the silicon one. We were going to see which worked best. I was afraid the silicon wouldn’t create the detail the metal woould. But I have a metal flower bundt pan and only have a 75% success rate getting the cakes out. So I opted for less-cute, but roof remaining intact! But I might still get the metal one when it’s on sale again, if Yaelle has good results. It could be my technique.
I agree - it would probably look the most christmasy too.
taste, I mean
LOL, I went a bit nuts one year with collecting recipes. Ok, more than one.
And I could never find them when I wanted them. So after I got Dragon Naturally Speaking (a voice recognition system) I wanted to learn it really well, so I figured I’d practice by putting my recipes into Word. Well, I had so many I had to separate them into categories. Then in the files, I have links to sub-categories (like rice, bread, & fruit puddings, etc).
I’m a bit neurotic about being organized - it’s the engineer in me, the one with a BAD memory! so it all works together ;) Being a computer person, I thought you’d have pudding and risotto files as well, LOL!
I think I am on here too much....it wasn’t that long ago and I couldn’t find them in the last 3 pages...
LOL I know what you mean...I am cleaning up last vestiges of fall on my patio (warm spell up here in Chicagoland) and checking FR ...
Thanks for the recipes. Your cakes look wonderful... I am going to have one heck of a bill at the grocery store, but this will be fun for me and daughter to do, and a lot better tasting and cheaper than Great Harvest Bread company :)
So nutmeg is not a nut~actually it is a dried seed—this is type of stuff I learn being married to an agronomist ;)
Microplaner? Hmmm I don’t have one. I have learned something else and may have to go get one :)
I live near Wilton headquarters...It is the Mothership for my daughter—and I love going there too...They just ended their tent sale—had all kinds of stuff on sale! Had spouse not just taken early retirement, I would have spent triple what I did.
That said, Discover Card is offering 5% back on Amazon purchases for this month, and I may look at getting some of those molds/tins there after you and Yaelle report results of silicon vs. metal bake off :) Yes, it is tricky getting the cakes out of metal! Wonder if there are some tricks to be learned on YouTube.
Oh to have a spice drawer and knife drawer!!! Maybe in my next house. We are looking to buy a farmette somewhere—where...that is the burning question...
What a great idea to practice Dragon. As I used to teach typing, I have not needed or used it—but I may get it later I am slowing down a bit from my prime typing speeds LOL.
Yes, you would think I would have everything on some sort of electronic file system, but I don’t...Anything happens to me, and it will be impossible for anyone to find stuff—I just know where everything is—and who’s recipe I need. I have great grandmother’s and grandmother’s recipes in their old binders and card files, my mother’s old binders and cookbooks (she was a cookbook collector—everywhere she went, bought one), my cookbooks, and then all kinds of stuff on Word files and in emails and scanned in...That said, I have put together small efiles/books for my kids of favorites—easy and cheap stuff they like :)
Interestingly, at Thanksgiving, my son asked for a new corn casserole recipe. He loved it and wanted to make more when he went back home.
Guess I better make organizing recipes a TWO-Year+ New Year’s Resolution. However, on the positive side, if SHTF before I complete the task, I have paper copies of old, simple recipes and will be able to cook for the fam ;)
Wish I knew about the 5% back! I’ve already shopped there for the season. I think...unless I think of something else ;)
Wilton - wow, that would be dangerous for me. But fun!
Cool to be looking at farmettes. Just the name is cute! What places are you considering? East Tennessee has some inexpensive properties, low taxes, NICE people - very conservative, reasonable weather. Just saying.... ;) If you want to come and visit, stay with us and look around. Greeneville has the REAL farming lots - the land is flatter and more amenable for crops. Here people raise cows. And other critters. We put our garden on the flattest spot on the property, but I still had seeds washed away when the rains were heavy.
They are darling :) Thanks for posting pictures!
I think I would like TN, KY, NC or GA...the heat would take some getting used to, but it’s doable and gardening is great in SE :)
I am not sure if I told you I lived in Knoxville for 3.5 years. I think I did mention it when we all were talking about getting together for the primary or election results ;) I love the hills and Smokies—off season when all the tourists are gone ;) I am not sure I need a huge amount of flat land but it is good to consider as it is a shame to plant and have seeds washed away...Wonder if you cannot plan for that by mulching more stuff on top of the seeds, putting down some chicken wire, etc. I had a similar problem trying to grow grass in front yard (slight slope), and we had some driving rains...I piled on a lot of leaves and mulch and that seemed to work.
Thanks so much for the offer to visit...I may take you up on offer if we get serious about the area :)
Patriot Nurse runs classes down there too—she is from the Knoxville area, and I hope to get there for one of her 2-day workshops...Have you heard of her?
Spouse is now leaning towards Wisconsin or Minnesota, but we will see. Wants to work a bit more and then make a permanent relocation. Wants to be near son and grandkids, but who can guarantee kids won’t move for better opportunity in this day and age?
Not sure I am ready to raise cows, but chickens and ducks are something I would like to try :) I spoke to a Freeper in Florida and they said they ventured into raising cows because there were major tax advantages in doing so...I think that is why all the celebs like Bon Jovi buy farms...because of tax advantages.
Me? I just want to start small...Maybe I should do a vanity on buying a farmette ;)
Very nice; and I like the ‘snow’ on top ;-)
I think it just all depends on what fascinates you enough to compel you to apply persistence in getting it right. I’ve always said that I was artistically ‘no good’; but when I’ve really loved something enough, I’ve done a lot better than I imagined I would.
The last time I bought whole nutmeg the cap was metal and was also a grater.
Thanks a lot. Sounds good.
For 4 lbs. meat thinly sliced meat
3/4 cp Worchestshire sauce
3/4 cp soy sauce
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp chili flakes (You might want to leave these out!)
2 Tbl molasses
1 Tbl honey
1/2 tsp curing salt.
2 tsp liquid smoke (I dump this one too)
Marinate meat for 12 hrs.
Daryl uses a smoke tepee but I like the dehydrator method a bit more. LOL.
Up for Carol's beet and acorn cookies?? (they sound just gross.)
The orange batter is one I’m going to make tomorrow. I wish there was a way to get it denser. I love your pics though, they do look good. It seems the silicone pan works just fine.
I was just looking at the pictures on Amazon that people posted for the metal pan. Looks like the detail is much much better. Nobody’s complaining about them not coming out so I’m thinking about getting it, now that the price is lower again.
I guess I’ll wait to hear your review, but I hope the pan doesn’t disappear or have the price go up! Bake fast and let me know :-)
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