I walk through a dessert song

[freckles_and_doubt]

It becomes urgent to post this, because in return mac1235 and tngr_spacecadet will give me more Doctor Who! *fangirlfangirlfangirl*. I'm dying to see the Agatha Christie episode.

---

MALVA PUDDING
(traditionally made by way of celebrating the calorie-burning chilliness of Cape winter)
(adapted from Ina Parman's recipe)

Cake:
250ml caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tblsp apricot jam
300ml flour
1 tsp bicarb
pinch salt
30 ml melted butter
1 tsp vinegar
125ml milk
(1 heaped tsp ground ginger, optional)

Sauce:
250ml cream
125g butter
125ml brown sugar
100 ml orange juice
30 ml sherry
(actually, you have about 130ml of liquid to play with as seems good to you - you can use any mix or proportion you like of orange juice, sherry, rum, brandy, weird liqueurs, whatever - be creative. I wouldn't personally recommend gin).

Right, so you sling together the eggs and caster sugar and beat them like hell, until they do that creamy frothy thing. (I use the whisk wossnames on the food processor and let it rip for a couple of minutes, usually while the guests shout to drown out the noise). Then add the apricot jam and give it another whirl - if you don't mix it properly you'll get weird jammy bits. You should, incidentally, use that hyper-smooth and unnatural low-quality apricot jam, anything with chunks of real fruit in it is (a) a waste, and (b) doesn't work, said chunks being too heavy for the mixture. If you've used a food processor you'll need to decant the egg mix into a largish bowl at this point.

Sift together the flour, bicarb, salt (and ginger, if using) into a small bowl, and leave with sieve poised. Mix the milk, vinegar and melted butter in a jug, completely ignoring the fact that the butter will promptly solidify and make bits. Let it, it's just teasing.

Sift about a third of the already-sifted dry ingredients into the eggy creamy apricotty mix. Carefully fold it in. Add about a third of the liquid mix and do likewise. Repeat procedure twice more with remaining two-thirds of both mixtures, alternating them, to give you an equation which looks something like P=3(FD/3 + FL/3) which you have arrived at by a process almost, but not quite, completely unlike integration. (wolverine_nun, stop wincing. I can reduce that equation to P=F(D+L), but it would hardly be useful). By the end of it you should have everything mixed together and no ingredients left except those for the sauce. Now is the time to realise that you should have turned the oven on to 180^oC before you started all this.

Reverently tip the fluffy mixture into a greased baking dish - I use a squarish pyrex one about 20cm across, and it'll need to be at least 6cm deep or you'll have interesting sauce catastrophes later. Bake at 180^oC for about 45 mins, or until it does the requisite springy-back cooked-cake thing when prodded.

While it's cooking, heat the sauce ingredients in a saucepan - you don't want to actually boil them or you'll get fudge, but you need to melt the sugar and butter and reduce the whole thing to a smooth creamy evil artery-hardening sauce. When the cake is cooked, poke it lavishly with something to make deep holes in it, right through to the bottom (I use a kebab stick), which will assist in the absorption of said evil sauce, and sling said sauce over it. You'll then need to leave it on the counter for about ten minutes for the cake to slurp up the sauce. It's usually worth standing over it with a wooden spoon as guests tend to stick their fingers in to sample the sauce, and rapping the knuckles of unrestrained samplers is one of a cook's innocent joys.

This makes a dense, rich, thoroughly unhealthy pudding, traditionally served hot with custard, only I'm usually too lazy to make the custard. And dashed good too.

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Last Night I Dreamed: epic quests with a group of animal companions. Hills, rivers and Significant Fountains were involved. Possibly also picnics. Memo to self: must go and see Prince Caspian.

Comments

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

I *wasn't* wincing. I was going "hmmm", and casting my back over the previous sentences to see what the variables stood for, while simultaneously checking your fractions for accuracy. I agree, F(D+L) would be the opposite of useful. In fact, it would be gross misuse of notation and would require an "ow!" written in red pen next to it.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

So, why would it be a gross misuse of notation? Enquiring minds want to know exactly how much algebra they've forgotten...

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

while (LiquidIngedients.Remaining() || DryIngedients.Remaining())
{
  EggMix.Add(DryIngedients.Extract(1/3));
  EggMix.Add(LiquidIngedients.Extract(1/3));
}

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

was taking bets with myself on how long it would be before someone trumped my inadequate maths with actual code. Longer than I thought, actually :>.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

Well, it does depend on what the F is for. You referred to the liquid as frothy, therefore FL could be frothy liquid. F for the dry is harder to place. If FL means Frothy Liquid then FL is a single variable and the F should not be separated from the L as in your braketed bit. (This is what the ow would be for.) However, if the F stands for Fold, then the brackety bit is fine. In fact P=3F(D/3 + L/3) might be better than the first form, as you're folding dry with liquid, not folding the dry by itself then adding folded liquid.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

F definitely means Fold, and yes, much more elegant to stick it outside the bracket. Although that might imply that you add a third of the dry to a third of the liquid and then fold it, which is actually not the point.

I am forced to conclude that baking is not, alas, algebraically reducible.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Ok, so it should be:





while (LiquidIngedients.Remaining() || DryIngedients.Remaining())
{
  EggMix.Add(DryIngedients.Extract(1/3));
  EggMix.Fold();
  EggMix.Add(LiquidIngedients.Extract(1/3));
  EggMix.Fold();
}


Baking isn't algebra, it's an algorithm.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Are the eggs separated into white and yolk? Beating whole eggs into a froth is beyond my very limited cooking experience.

[bronchitikat.livejournal.com]

Oh you can do it. It's part of the basic recipe for a real sponge cake - as opposed to a Victoria sandwich. Just make sure you use an electric mixer, unless you have very good beating muscles (says she who once tried with a hand mixer!)

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Whole thing together. If you beat eggs for long enough, they will froth up - they don't go stiff like eggwhites do if you beat them on their own, but when beaten with sugar they achieve the consistency of thick cream. You really, really want an electric mixer for this.

[bronchitikat.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Ma'am. Duly noted & marked for when our winter hits - which, with the current forecasts, could be in the next couple of days. For a while at least.

no spoilers

[tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com]

Yum! I think I will get the ingredients at lunchtime, and impress our dinner group tomorrow.

We watched the shadows in the library episodes last night. They were creepy/funny/disturbing with some fairly predictable cyber-whatchamacallit storyline but will definitely make me feel differently about libraries in future. No spoilers for you here though :P

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

At closer inspection, further thought and concerted rumination, I conclude that there is only one thing wrong with this recipe.

It does not contain any chocolate.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I realise this may be heresy, but not all desserts have to contain chocolate. This one is okay because it contains the food groups Stodge, Sugar and Booze, which are not quite as canonical as Chocolate, but still important.

[origamitiger.livejournal.com]

I think you will be interested to know that the ingredients for this recipe have been bought because frog requested them. He is muttering about baking this weekend!

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

I didn't get around to it this weekend. maybe tonight. I take it that the flour is white, not Self-raising?

[origamitiger.livejournal.com]

White flour as there s bi carb in the recipe, that is the rising agent.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Arrgh, why are all the dry ingredients given in ml?
Except, oddly, for the second occurrence of butter.
Is this due to a lack of kitchen scale on your part?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I dunno, that's what the recipe has. I actually find ml easier for dry ingredients, if you have one of those ml-marked measuring jugs and a proper 15ml tablespoon.

I think the first butter occurrence is in ml because it's a small amount and not a huge pain to measure in a spoon, which the 125g amount would be. Large butter amounts in ml drive me completely bonkers - a lot of American recipes do it, and the only way to deal with it is to put knobs of butter into water in a ml measure, and measure displacement. It's a total pain. Butter is best measured in grams.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Our ml-marked measuring jug is not good for such small quantities. Nevertheless, after discovering that 250ml is one cup, I did a reasonable half-quantity malva last night.