The second instalment of Operation Buttercream: we hunt for the perfect vanilla cupcake (think Victoria sponge), research colour and fancier flowers and get some decisions from the bride & groom.

The Perfect Vanilla Cupcake

I’m using vanilla cupcakes as a base for the Strawberry Champagne Cupcakes and the White Chocolate Ganache Cupcakes. I want a recipe that uses ordinary ingredients – ordinary flour, buttermilk, yoghurt, heavy cream, applesauce etc. The cupcakes should keep easily 3 to 4 days, being moist and have an even crumb. Extensive research and a couple of test bakes later – I’ve found it. Only nine ingredients but with more elaborate preparation requirements, worth it.

Baking under exam conditions, I was reminded that my oven bakes hot. I’m using foil lined cupcake cases and this also concentrates heat. I used the suggested oven temperature and that resulted in the cupcakes on the right hand side of the photo. If the oven is too hot, the outside of the cupcake bakes more quickly and forces the batter in the centre up into a dome. Second test bake I reduced the oven temperature to 170C and got the smooth surface on the left.

Recipe – Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 150 grams plain flour (not self rising)
• 1 1/4 tsp baking powder 
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 2 eggs medium to large
• 150 g caster sugar (or granulated)
• 60g unsalted butter cut into cubes, can be straight from the refrigerator
• 125 ml full fat milk
• 2 tsp top quality vanilla extract
• 1.5 tsp vegetable oil 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F (160°C fan) for 20 minutes before starting the batter. Place shelf in the middle of the oven.
2. Place cupcake liners in a standard muffin tin. (makes 12)
3.  Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.
4. Heat the milk and butter until the butter is just melted. I do this in a saucepan because it then stays warm. You can also do this in a heatproof bowl in the microwave. If using the microwave, start with 1 minute and then 15 second bursts, you don’t want the milk to boil.
5. Beat the eggs on medium high speed for 30 seconds. Keep the mixer going, add the sugar over another 30 seconds. Turn speed up to high (I used 8 on my KitchenAid) and then beat the eggs and sugar for 6 minutes. It won’t turn into meringue but it will increase in volume and lighten in colour.
6. Incorporate the dry ingredients. After the eggs and sugar are whipped, scatter 1/2 of the flour mixture across surface, then beat on low speed very briefly, no more than 10 seconds. Stop, incorporate the remaining ingredients in the same way. Take a look at the batter, beat only until you can’t see any flour. Don’t beat out all the air you just beat into the eggs & sugar.
7. Pour the still warm milk & butter into the empty flour bowl. Add a generous ladle of batter to the mixture and hand whisk until smooth. This ‘tempers’ the warm milk and butter and means your butter won’t ‘curdle’ (split). Needs to be whisked until smooth and foamy.
8. Turn your stand mixer onto it’s lowest speed and slowly pour the tempered milk and butter in. Beat for 15 seconds. Turn the mixer off. Scrape down the sides and the base, the batter should be very smooth.
9. I pipe batter into the cases. This needs my largest blue piping bags but it reduces waste and gives more control over filling. If you do by hand, use an ice cream trigger scoop. Fill the cases to about 2/3 full. Don’t overfill, you get convex surfaces.
10. Place on the middle rack of the oven; bake for 20 minutes. Check temperature of a cupcake in the centre of the tin, should be above 95 degrees. Cupcakes will be golden and your thermometer will come out clean.

Colour and Fancier Flowers

I will never be a professional standard ‘cupcake decorator’ but am moving on from the basics. A couple of things I was looking for in this next decorating test batch; whiter buttercream, sharper edges on the flowers and getting colour effects with piping. I also want to buttercream to dry out a bit as it’s piped for longevity. Back to the internet we went.

Natural buttercream icing is butter, icing sugar, vanilla and just enough water to make it firm yet pipable. It tastes great but it’s naturally pale yellow rather than white. Here’s a video on making the buttercream wedding white. Essentially you dye it white. I tried two methods, white titanium powder added to the icing sugar and white gel professional standard food colouring. The gel food colouring produced better results and gave me sharper edges on the piped flowers, so we’re sticking with that method for the white icing. The pure white icing is for the carrot cake cupcakes.

Gaining confidence from making icing white and my ease of piping the large roses – time to add some colour. There is a long video from Cornel on colours and piping bags. There are a number of colours and techniques I didn’t need but I watched it through and made pages of notes. There are other techniques to get 2 different colours in the piping bag but the method of putting a stripe of the contrast colour along the seam of the piping bag and filling the rest with the main colour seems intuitively correct and simple to me. It’s a bit difficult to see but the top left cupcake with the green edge is my favourite. I piped the centre rosebud in pure white then all of the rose petals with the green edge.

Decisions from Bride & Groom

A couple of decisions I was looking for; shape and design of the cupcake cases, accent colours based on the bride’s flowers and attendants gowns and sign off on the first two decorating designs. I’m not going to share those yet – will keep you in suspense until the wedding.

Notes on this test bake

• I’ve got some help lined up for the big event – so for washing up, making basics, filling piping bags, etc. But it will be good to have a lot of certain things:
  – piping bags both for the cupcakes and of various strengths for the icing, I can see going through 50 or so with ease,
  – palette knives, straight and pointed. Probably 10 straight ones and 3 pointed ones. Having more will reduce the temptation to wipe and re-use, which creates risk for colour pollution, it would be easy to ruin a large batch of white with a little bit of blue or green,
  – piping tips, Wilton 104 and leaf tips
  – will investigate Russian piping tips, I think may work very well for the white chocolate ganache.

Think pink for the next instalment. And yes, my hands are sore.

Autumn has arrived in England and soup is back on the menu. My mother wasn’t big on prepared or convenience food when we were young. One thing that slipped through her objections was Campbells Bean & Bacon soup. It was my favourite. Time to re-create Bean & Bacon as part of my project to reclaim convenience foods.

I use dried beans in my cooking, they are easier to store than canned beans and last more or less forever. Covid lockdowns made me a bit of a hoarder and some of my dried beans are from 2020. Still good. The other reason to use dried beans is that you can use the ‘hot soak’ method to soften them. Hot soak method reduces the amount of gas that bean dishes produce in humans. Nothing eliminates the consequences of bean consumption but hot soak, in my experience, reduces it significantly.

The recipe below includes instructions for using dried beans and canned beans. The only difference is cooking time. A mini-chopper is very useful for the vegetables and a stick blender great to puree some soup to thicken.

Let’s cook.

Recipe

Ingredients

380 grams (2 cups by volume) dried white beans (navy beans) OR 2 x 425 gram (15 ounce) cans of beans

8 strips of smoked streaky bacon, cut into small pieces

Lard or butter to sauté bacon and vegetables

1 medium onion, finely diced

3 medium carrots, diced

3 stalks of celery, diced

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

110 grams (4 tablespoons) tomato paste

500 mls (2 cups) of pork or ham stock

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons of brandy or cognac

Method

1. If using dried beans, follow instructions here for soaking methods. Otherwise, open your tins of beans.
2. Preheat the oven to 180C (350F).
3. Sautè the bacon until crisp in the lard or butter in a large deep oven proof casserole (Dutch oven) or a skillet. Your le Creuset or similar is perfect. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon to drain on kitchen towel.
4. Add the onions to the pan and cook over medium high heat until transparent. Pour the brandy over the onions and turn up to high to cook off the alcohol.
5. Return heat to medium, add the carrots and the celery and cook until they start to soften – 5 minutes or so.
6. Add the spices and the tomato paste, stir to coat the vegetables well. Add the stock and the beans and bring to a simmer. Stir in the bacon.
7. Put the cover on the pot and transfer to the oven. Check once an hour or so, stir and add more water if necessary. Canned beans – may be ready in 90 minutes, if you started with dried beans the soup may take 2 1/2 or 3 hours for the beans to reach the desired softness.
8. Remove from the oven; transfer one or two ladles of beans to your blender or liquidiser. Blend and return to the soup to thicken it.
9. Garnish with additional crispy bacon or slices of sausage if desired, serve warm with crusty bread.
   

Thank you for reading the blog. Let me know how the recipe works (or doesn’t) for you in the comments or tag me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

We have a weekly delivery of box of organic vegetables. It’s a self imposed challenge to use up whatever they send. I’ve got 3 choices for ‘do not send’ – these are currently occupied by beetroot (beets you Americans), Brussell sprouts and avocado. It’s not just organic – they work hard on reducing the travel miles on the vegetables. Hence, the humble swede appears frequently in the box.

Why is it called rutabaga in America? And what is a turnip if its not a baby swede? Who knows, the weird and wonderful names of vegetables are beyond my expertise.

When a boring root vegetable appears – soup is the answer. Oven roasting does wonders for root vegetables going into soup, really adds a layer of taste. It’s worth the extra prep time and clean up. I like to really scorch the swede just to the edge of burnt. I did it by accident – oh the dangers of multi tasking a well known recipe – and now it’s required by the Davinator.

Handy tools for this recipe: parchment paper for roasting, a mandolin for slicing in the vegetables, a stick blender to puree the soup at the end. Or a good sized blender. Can also be done in a food processor but both of those alternatives add messy clean up steps.

I add croutons and sautéed chorizo to make the soup a meal. If you’re feeling a need for more vegetables, a green salad on the side would be lovely.

Make this recipe vegan by omitting the butter and avoiding cream or chorizo.

Let’s get cooking.

Ingredients

The recipe proportions are for 450 grams of swede. Adjust if your swede is larger or smaller. Usually larger, in my experience.

• 1 swede, peeled and cut into 2 cm (1 inch) cubes
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1 onion (mandolin into the soup or chop well)
• 2 tablespoons of brandy (trust me)
• 2 medium carrots (mandolin into the soup or chop well)
• 2 stalks of celery (mandolin into the soup or chop well)
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• 1.25 litres vegetable stock
• Optional garnish: cream, croutons, fried chorizo
• Plain bread croutons – 6 to 8 generous sized croutons per bowl of soup
• 50 grams of chorizo per bowl of soup

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180C(fan)200C(nonfan)/400F
2. Peel the swede and cut into 2 cm (1 inch) cubes
3. Put some olive, salt and pepper in a bowl, add the cubes of swede and toss
4. Line baking trays with parchment paper and put the well coated swede in a single layer on the baking trays. Don’t crowd the cubes together because then it steams more than roasts.
5. Roast for 20 mins, remove, turn thoroughly with a spatula, return to the oven for another 20 minutes. Keep an eye on the swede, you want to caramelise not burn but the more brown the better.
6. Meanwhile, heat another tablespoon of olive oil and a similar amount of butter in a large deep saucepan. Add the onions – either pre-chopped or mandolin. Cook over medium heat until well translucent. Pour the brandy or cognac over the onions and turn up the heat to burn off the alcohol. (Sniff the vapours, you’ll know when the alcohol is gone).
7. Return pan heat to medium, add the carrots, celery and thyme. Cook for another five minutes, add the stock and the roasted swede.
8. Bring to a gentle boil, cover and cook for 25-30 minutes. Turn the heat down once you’ve covered the mixture so it’s just ticking over.
9. Purée the soup by your chosen method – if you tneed the exercise, you can put the soup through a ricer or a potato press as an alternative. Return the soup to the pan and cover while you prepare the garnish.
10. If you’re adding chorizo, slice into diagonal rounds and add to a warm skillet, sauté to release the oil and throw the croutons in. The chorizo will shrink and look a bit dry but it makes the flavour more concentrated and the fried croutons are little flavour bombs.
11. Serve in pre-warmed bowls, with a swirl of cream if you want and your choice of garnish.

Thank you for reading and sharing the blog and the recipes. Tag me on Twitter or Instagram @mamadolson if you post a photo.

Five ingredient omelette.

I have a friend who loves food and hates to cook. By special request, I’m going to establish a special category of recipes on the website – known as the Love Food Hate Cooking recipes. Scrambled eggs on toast was the traditional default dinner of a busy single woman. My omelette recipe takes only a bit more time and effort but is extremely versatile.

The trick to the easy perfect omelette is to start it on the stove top, finish it under the grill and never ever flip it. All you need is butter, eggs, filling(s) and an oven proof skillet. The omelette above is made using crab, parmesan cheese and chives. It is infinitely flexible on ingredients and combination – any kind of cheese, protein that’s precooked (ham, smoked, salmon, thinly sliced sausage, cooked chicken, etc), vegetables that have been properly prepared. Both the recipe and method are straightforward.

I use a le Creuset skillet – they are expensive but stand the test of time. My youngest son is 25 years old and I have le Creuset cookware that predates him. There are other brands of enamelled cast iron cookware that will work well – the heavy bottom pan makes a difference.

Let’s get cooking.

Recipe

Ingredients – two servings

Butter, plenty of it

4 eggs

Tablespoon of dairy – milk, yogurt, cream – any unsweetened dairy (optional)

150 grams of crab meat

40 grams of finely grated parmesan cheese

Handful of chives

Method

1. Beat the eggs with the spoonful of dairy. Including dairy makes the omelette a bit fluffy, it’s optional though.
2. Melt butter in the oven proof skillet – plenty of butter to coat the bottom and sides of the skillet. Don’t let the butter brown.
3. Turn the heat down to medium-low and add the eggs to the skillet. Cooking the omelette a bit more slowly at a lower heat keeps the eggs from turning tough or rubbery.
4. Preheat your grill at this point.
5. Cook until the edges and bottom of the egg mixture are starting to firm up. You should be able to run a rubber spatula around the edge. Carefully add the crab meat, then the cheese and herbs.
6. Place under the grill and cook until lightly browned and fluffy. Depending on the heat of your grill – this is likely to be 5 to 10 minutes.

The omelette just before it goes under the grill.

Thank you for reading the blog and cooking the recipes. Let me know how it goes and send requests.

I was nervous about jam and jelly until a friend said these immortal words ‘if it doesn’t set, pour it back in the pot and boil it some more’. That and a new sugar thermometer and I was off. We’ve had a great strawberry season in the UK – at one point strawberries were £2 per kilo ($1.15 per pound weight for los Americanos). I found sugar at a good price and I have made a lot of jam.

Don’t worry the Davinator will not be at risk from strawberry jam poisoning. The same friend doesn’t make strawberry jam or jelly so we have an exchange programme – I’ll trade strawberry jam and crab apple jelly for whisky marmalade and damson jam. Plus I take away her crab apples and make jelly with those. Crab apple jelly (recipe here) is the best combo with peanut butter.

Strawberry jam is traditionally ‘macerated’ overnight. Maceration means you cut up the strawberries, combine them with sugar and pectin and leave them to do their thing. Next morning they are floating in strawberry juice and ready to cook and jar up.

If you’re new to preserving, do your homework first. Youtube is full of ‘jam for beginners’ videos and there is a legion of blogs. My recommendation is to identify your ‘method’ and stick to it. I was making jam, jelly and preserves from a young age – my sisters and I were mom’s kitchen slaves. So I come to this with a fair amount of experience. Your first jam experience may well leave your kitchen looking like a bomb went off but every time after that it improves.

Gadgets do help with jam. Below left is my 2 bowl scale for weighing sugar and pectin separately and below right is a gadget that takes the stem and slightly fibrous centre out of the strawberries in one smooth movement. See the short video I made here.

The other gadget I highly recommend is a proper sugar thermometer – old school analogue that clips to the side of the pan. This is my new KitchenCraft. (other brands are available). It’s predecessor was so old that the numbers were unreadable. Why analogue? You will stand there waiting for your jam to hit 105C and you don’t want to be dipping your high tech digital gadget every 10 seconds. And there’s no annoying tiny battery that is always dead just because it is and it’s not a size you have. Trust me on this one.

Let’s get on to the recipe. My instructions assume some experience but not a jam maestro level.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 kilo of strawberries

750 grams sugar

Pectin

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Jars and lids for approximately 1,000 mls of jam.

Instructions

1. 12 hours before (at least – I leave mine for 36 hours) hull your strawberries and cut large ones in half. If you’ve got giant ones, maybe 4 pieces. But the lovely thing about this jam is the chunks of strawberries so don’t go too small.
2. Get your sugar and pectin ready. I use plain sugar and add powdered pectin. Pectin is necessary for this jam. You can also use liquid pectin or jam sugar which has pectin included. My preferred pectin has me adding 8 grams per kilo combined fruit and sugar so 12 -15 grams for this recipe.
3. Stir the sugar and pectin into the fruit to coat well – avoid the temptation to eat the sugared strawberries. I use a ceramic bowl, I’m always nervous about letting fruit juice sit in a metal bowl. Cover loosely with a shower cap or plastic wrap.
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4. Find your jars, lids, jam funnel, tongs, ladle, wax circles, gloves for handling hot jars.
5. Sterilise your jars – I run mine through the dishwasher and then put them in the oven at about 130C in a baking pan. I take the pan out and leave the jars in it as I fill them – it contains any mess. I put the lids in boiling water with the jam funnel then lift them out with tongs as I go.
6. Tip the strawberry sugar mixture into a heavy pan – I use one of my le Creuset pots. Add the lemon juice and set over a low heat. Dissolve all of the sugar before you turn the heat up or you may have sugar lumps in your jam.
7. Sugar all dissolved, it’s time for the scary part – boiling the jam mixture until it reaches 105C (220F) on your thermometer. There are other methods for checking the set – here’s one from BBC Goodfood. Personally I prefer the thermometer. n
8. As the jam is boiling you can skim any scum that has risen to the top. Use a metal spoon, only do this once near the end – it reduces wastage.
9. Your jam is ready to put in the jars – I have a pair of oven mittens that I use for this step (see photo below – gift from one of my sisters in Michigan) because they are flexible enough to allow me to use the ladle and tongs and insulated enough to protect my hands and wrists. Fill your jars, top with wax circles or liquid paraffin. Put the lids on and tighten as soon as you can handle the jars.
10. Label your jars and remember to put the date on them. Your jam should last a year stored in a cool dark place. Refrigerate after opening is recommended. Jam doesn’t last long enough in this house to need that, though.

Don’t be tempted to double batch the recipe. It will be difficult to reach the correct temperature without scorching the jam. I tend to have two batches ‘working’ at the same time. One coming up to the boil and the other on a gentle simmer to dissolve the sugar.

Thank you for reading the blog – sorry its been so intermittent, it’s been a busy social and sporting summer here in England. Let me know if you try the recipes and have any feedback – I did leave out a crucial step in herby courgette bread until someone pointed out that at no point did it tell you to add the grated courgettes 😳.