Becky Bakes…

Having grown up in a household where running out of anything was a minor disaster, it should come as no surprise that I have a well-stocked pantry. So when, in March, we began making videos I had plenty of my most useful ingredients. On the occasions that I needed flour it was available until, apparently “we all started baking”. (I’d never stopped) There were some weeks when the flour didn’t seem as plentiful in the supermarket and then it disappeared from the shelves altogether. There was no shortage – mills were working flat out – but it couldn’t be packaged quickly enough to keep up with demand. Oddly enough I’ve spotted massive sacks for sale in both Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in recent weeks – who can store one of those at home? Luckily for me, there is a lovely bespoke cake shop nearby and although closed, their deliveries were still being received so I was able to buy flour and other ingredients “loose” from there. (You may have noticed that sometimes my flour is in a glass storage jar). Normally I prefer to use Homepride which comes in a distinctive box and snappy lid, good for preventing flour mites getting in and they sit neatly on my shelf. Well – this week we heard that last Winter was too wet to plant the wheat, this Spring was too wet for it to grow and guess what? The Summer was too hot for it to ripen too. Result…poor harvest=higher prices+potential shortages (again). What am I going to do? Put it on the shopping list and get a good stock ready, just in case. Oh, and bread prices will probably go up too. I’ll be back to my alternative source no doubt – as she had bread flour and yeast as well!

An apple a day keeps the doctor away; an apple-pie bed; an apple for the teacher; up the apples and pears; in apple-pie order; apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze- that’s my favourite apple-related saying. Then there’s Johnny-appleseed and Appley-Dapply’s nursery rhymes. Where would we be without apples? The first recorded Bramley was in the garden of Mary Anne Brailsford who lived near Southwell, Nottinghamshire. As a child, in around 1812, she planted the pip from an apple her mother was using. This grew to a full sized tree and when the house and garden were sold to Matthew Bramley he formally named it and allowed cuttings to be produced in his name. The Bramley is considered ideal for cooking but unsuitable to be eaten as a dessert apple as it’s so sour. I’ve never been able to find them in any other country, although the U.S. has several equally tart varieties. We have many native sweet apples and often independent greengrocers and farm shops will have varieties such as Katy, Greensleeves, Saturn, Baldwin, Empire and of course Cox’s Orange Pippin, although I doubt you’ll find May Queen- a legend in our household. Any of these would make a change from Golden Delicious, Gala and even Braeburn but they have cornered the popular market by being pretty much the only varieties offered in supermarkets these days. High in vitamin C and in fibre apples are versatile and blend well with other flavours- so I make no apology for the number of videos of apple dishes coming up at the moment! x

Earlier this week, with the impending arrival of our favourite daughter, I made a batch of Brownie and posted a picture of it on Facebook along with a cryptic comment. Brownie has figured large in her years at University and was even requested for their wedding feast. Our younger nephew rarely posts on FB but is a connoisseur of chocolate cake, with his absolute fave being Granny Pat’s recipe (which I’m banned from sharing with you, sorry). It seems there has been little success on the brownie-front in their kitchen so I decided to send him a little cake parcel. Being totally fair and even-handed I then wrapped another box for his older brother. Happily both arrived the very next day. So more of the cake was consumed with coffee and as dessert with ice cream and another little box packed for the daughter to take home. That all left very little in the tin for the lovely ladies down the road to receive – but they won’t know what they missed this week. I better make some more 😉 The second curved ball came when, as an administrator of my website, I looked at my “stats” and could see how many people had visited the site each day. Noticing some small print, I then clicked on that and discovered I could see exactly which recipes had been downloaded and other areas that had been looked at. But there, lower down , was a map pf the world with countries coloured for their “visitors”. I’m sure you will have guessed that most were from UK, but if you know me well you’ll be expecting USA too. But what about China ? Ex-pupils perhaps…and Australia ? Parents of a friend maybe. Any ideas anyone ?

Way back in March we spent many moments listening to the experts who advised us about life during the pandemic. I felt so sorry for these people suddenly thrust into the public eye and trying to explain the science to us all. As the weeks went on my faith in them grew, especially when one in particular wouldn’t condone the actions of a certain senior advisor to the PM…..They often spoke about the “new normal” and we wondered how that would look. Well, after the words of Chris Witty – this is as good as it’s going to be for quite a while – I think we may have reached it. Yes, it’s difficult seeing friends and family in the way that we used to, but we need to make the best of this new normal. In order to catch up with friends who live in the frozen north (my words meant humorously) we all travelled to a half-way point, found by dubious map searching and the use of a ruler, where we had a lovely afternoon courtesy of the National Trust. The house was closed but the gardens were beautiful, including an ancient Lebanese cedar and a massive mulberry bush, then a picnic gave us the chance to set the world to rights. Any park or riverside would have been just as good to be honest. Whilst we still have such lovely weather let’s see where we can find chances and opportunities to meet and eat, chat, exchange long-overdue birthday gifts and the like, all socially distanced of course. Let’s embrace the new normal and those of us who are more mobile accept that “half way” might be that little bit further up the motorway and go the extra mile.

Teaching Food Tech to the under-11’s within the constraints of timetable blocks was quite a challenge. In addition to the practical activity there was always some science, often maths, invariably geography and history…..never mind the interruptions by visitors or just curious colleagues. Inevitably organisation was key. Planning ahead meant time spent before the lesson weighing out the ingredients each child would need and getting out all their equipment. This level of organisation is worthwhile out of the school environment as it can prevent errors and mishaps in our kitchens too. It’s always a good idea to check we have all our ingredients before we start, getting them weighed out saves time during the mixing process – and if the doorbell(or phone) rings you will immediately know if you added the sugar !

We’re very lucky to live so near to the coast and my regular exercise is usually taken walking by the sea. The first decision is whether to turn right at the bottom of the road where I’m soon to be on the prom heading in the direction of town and the pier with all the hustle and bustle then the bird reserve, the docks and the river Orwell. If I turn to the left I’ll be on the grassy cliff top heading for The Dip and the golf course, eventually The Ferry and the river Deben. Since March I’ve purposefully been turning left in order to avoid the increasing number of socially-spaced gatherings which make my path quite tricky. That is until this week when I turned right. It was a delight to suddenly catch sight of people I’ve missed for so long…beach hut owners and ex-pupils as well as long term friends. It really shook me though, when one usually cheery lady didn’t give me her wide grin and wild wave and her eyes had lost their twinkle. We stood and chatted for many minutes, maybe twenty or more as she told me about the loneliness lockdown has brought. I thought she might cry, so instinctively put my hand on her shoulder. The sunken eyes looked at me and she said I was the first person to touch her since March. She hadn’t/hasn’t seen her family and only 3 people have knocked at her door. So here’s a challenge for you, dear reader. Make a batch of Jammy Shortcakes – you’ll get 20, that’s 4 more than the recipe intends. Wrap the extras and take them to a person who lives alone. Chat for a while and then pause, give them a chance to tell you how they feel. And wait.

Quails, pullets, hens, ducks, goose, ostrich. Speckled ones, white, cream,brown, blue/green ones. So many to choose from, but my guess is that we mostly choose hens eggs and in this country they are mostly brown these days. The amazing thing is that with all that variety, their structure remains the same – shell, membrane, thin white, thick white, balancers, yolk and germinal disc. They are the most versatile of all our ingredients, whether soft boiled, hard boiled, scrambled, coddled, baked, fried or poached (which is my favourite)not to mention the magnificence of meringues. I remember a wonderful lunch in Lavenham where we were all intrigued by the offer of a crispy egg. Lunch took a while to arrive and the explanation was that so many of us had chosen the dish it gave the chef problems. It was served with kedgeree and we discovered the egg(s) had been lightly poached, then coated in egg and breadcrumbs and quickly deep-fried. Amazing and yes, tricky. Watching Gordon Ramsey wielding a hand mixer and making a cake earlier this week, he looked uncomfortable until he took hold of the first egg and cracked it on the side of the bowl, mixer still whirring, then the second egg and the third. Very cavalier, in my book. What about checking for shell fragments? This week I made another ginger cake and dutifully checked for shell, then in the tiny bowl I’d chosen, gave it a casually quick mix before adding it to the mixing bowl. When I poured the batter into the tin there was a blob of unmixed white and yes, yolk too. I found a clump of baked yolk in the cooked cake and haven’t served it. Yellow amongst the brown doesn’t look good! The moral of the story? Cavalier isn’t clever.

Sugar, not jewellery. Most of the sugar beet grown in the UK can be seen in the fields of East Anglia. Harvested in the late autumn, great lorry loads trundle to Bury St. Edmunds where they are processed in the steam-belching plant next to the A14. It’s a process that uses vast quantities of water, not least because the great, gnarly tubers are so dirty. After washing they are chopped, cooked, mashed and then the liquid evaporated off to give us the grains we expect. My cupboard has various versions – granulated, caster, icing,soft brown, demerara, muscovado…not to mention the golden gran and the cubes. As a child it seemed everyone needed sugar in their tea. No longer rationed it was considered a staple and was sprinkled on cornflakes and even strawberries – in fact we had a special “sugar caster” to enhance the experience ! Then a chap called John Yudkin exploded the myth by writing “Pure, white and deadly” (1972) in which he explained how unnecessary and harmful sugar really was. It caused uproar and was denounced by the industry and government. Yet it’s been reprinted twice and is now considered wisdom well ahead of its’ time. Nobody needs sugar – it’s found in all fruits, many vegetables (think sweetcorn) and even in milk. Yet without it our cakes won’t rise as the chemistry involved in baking is finely tuned. Reducing the amount of sugar in a cake will result in failure and you won’t eat the whole cake anyway ! White gold refers to the slave trade when sugar cane was exported all over the globe. My father’s earliest memory was of walking by a ship moored at Ipswich docks and being thrown a piece of sugar cane to chew on. Thank goodness that at least humble mangelwurzel was modified to create the sugar beet we now know.

I remember going into a restaurant in Hatfield in 1980 where we were met by a bank of microwave ovens behind the refrigerated display. All the starters and desserts on the menu were cold, whilst the main courses had been cooked ahead and frozen, so our conversation was punctuated by frequent pings as the chosen meals were thawed and heated. I had never come across anything like it – but the food was delicious so we went back time and again taking family and friends to experience this innovation. Although microwave ovens were never intended for domestic use, the novelty of speed in the kitchen rapidly gained popularity and I found myself teaching their use in school and demonstrating their use to the Horticultural Society. A marble cake cooked in a ring mould still looked like a steamed pudding and tasted pretty bad, so was decorated with melted chocolate and raspberries. I still rarely make use of my m/wave and only this week discouraged a friend from melting her butter this way – an “A” level pupil suffered by overtiming his block, it was molten in the middle whilst still appearing as a firm block. Overheard in a supermarket – “we don’t need one of those taking up space on the worktop”. What’s your view ?

A; When it’s a sponge! As someone who grew up in the sixties and seventies I was taught by very straightlaced ladies in an all-girls school. The consequence was that every subject was given an equal footing. Housecraft included. We learned the traditional rules behind food production and presentation, with the end of year exams testing our knowledge. So a cake has 4 main ingredients; fat, sugar, flour and eggs. It keeps well because of the fat content and other ingredients can be added to make it flavoured. A sponge however, only has 3 ingredients – eggs, sugar and flour. No fat, hence “fatless sponge”. It doesn’t keep beyond the day it was made and so often was put into a trifle – trifle sponge. Think Swiss roll, sponge flan (remember those?) Well I suppose nowadays these things aren’t important to most people but having learnt them I find it hard to let them go and they do actually have a relevance. Like scone cutters, but that’s another story…..