I'm the kind of person who needs to bake things. I don't know what it is, but I get this urge to bake. I can't help it. And when I don't want to make something sweet, I have to make something else.
A little while ago I went to the bakery with my friend and bought a savoury muffin. It was full of pumpkin and roast capsicum and sun-dried tomatoes and olives. Yum.
These savoury muffins aren't quite that full of things, but they still taste great. They're a mix-and-bake sort of a muffin. The cheese on top makes them a little bit tastier. And they're super good straight out of the oven with some homemade relish on the top. These muffins are crumbly and moist.
Here comes lunch!
Olive savoury muffins. Adapted from Stephanie Alexander's 'The cooks companion' Makes 12
220g self-raising flour
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1/2 cup oil (I used olive)
70g pitted kalamata olives, chopped
1/4-1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
salt and pepper
grated parmesan, to top the muffins
Preheat oven to 180C and grease a muffin tin.
Put flour, cayenne pepper and salt and pepper (to taste) into a large bowl.
Make a well in the centre and pour in milk, oil and the egg.
Mix everything together until just combined.
Fold in the olives.
Spoon into the muffin tins and top with grated parmesan.
Bake for 20-25 mins.
It's no secret that I love everything to do with food. Not just eating, but food blogs, cookbooks, food photography... you get the idea.
But I like other things, too. I like music, reading, walking, art, and playing guitar.
You might not know this about me, but I used to do a lot of art and crafty things. I did photography and art in school and at one point, I was really into street art and I thought that that's what I wanted to do with my life.
With holidays coming up, I've gotten really into craft blogs. They've always got such good ideas that seem really easy, and get me really excited about sitting inside with a mountain of off-cut material, ribbons and a hot glue gun. My mother would be so proud!
So I'm sharing my favourite crafty blogs with you in the hope that you might also get excited and inspired. They all seem to be done by lovely lady's (aren't guys into craft?), so there are lots of girly ideas, like making cushion covers and headbands. But that's the kind of thing that makes me happy when the weather is so cold outside...
This cake was both a disaster and a success. It seems odd that one cake can be so contradictory, but it's true. It was a success because I hadn't made a cake with quinces before, and there were so many opportunities for it to go badly, but it didn't. The quinces were perfectly poached, the batter tasted good and the syrup on top was amazing.
It was a disaster, though, because of the syrup on top. If you only learn one thing today, please, let it be this: Don't be impatient.
I poured the syrup on the cake while it was cooling in the pan. And then I flipped out the cake onto a plate. When I tried to flip it back onto the cooling rack, the syrup was stuck to the plate and ripped the sticky top off the cake. Not completely, but enough for me to freak out.
I freak out a lot when I'm baking. And I don't think the cake was quite cooked properly.
So there you have it: Contradictions.
A quince is not a pretty fruit. They're motley yellow and covered in a grey fluff. You can't eat them raw because they're outrageously tart. And when you peel and chop them, not only do they brown almost instantly, but they smell funny. After they've been poached, though, they turn a lovely rosey colour and they taste much better than you could have imagined.
I made a fairly simple tea cake batter (is that what you call it?) for this recipe and mashed half the poached quinces into the batter. Then I put the rest of the quinces into the batter, imagining that they would be nice to bite into. Next time, I'd mash all the quinces into the cake, just to see what a difference that makes. I'll have to wait till next year, I guess, because I used all my quinces in this cake.
I took this cake into work and made everyone eat it, and they all seemed to like it. So take that, Disaster!
2 cups poached quinces*
220g self-raising flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
110g unsalted butter, softened
330g sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup pure cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 160C. Grease and flour a 20cm springform pan.
Cream butter and sugar.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one.
Mix flour, cinnamon and salt together.
Beat in half the flour mix.
Add the cream.
Beat in remaining flour mix and vanilla.
Strain poaching liquid from quinces and reserve.
Mash half the poached quinces and fold into the batter.
Pour half the batter into the prepared tin.
Arrange remaining poached quinces over the batter.
Pour the remaining batter over the quinces.
Bake for 1 1/4 hours, or until cake tester comes out clean.
[Optional] Make a sticky quince syrup. In a small saucepan, mix the reserved poaching liquid with 1/2 cup water, 3 tbsp caster sugar and 2 tsps lemon juice. Cook over a low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, until mixture starts to thicken. Pour this over the cake once it has cooled.
*Poach peeled, cored and chopped quinces with about 2 cups water, 4 tbsps sugar, cinnamon and 1 vanilla bean, until soft, about 20-30 mins. If you're new to quinces, you could use less than 2 cups. This was about 8 medium quinces that were a bit bruised and had been eaten by bugs. So I ended up with less use-able fruit than I anticipated.
I'd like to say that this is a recipe for borscht, but if I said that, I would be lying. This is a recipe for beetroot soup.
Not that I'm complaining. Who wouldn't want to eat that bowl of purple soup?
The sour cream helps to cut through the sweet, earthy beetroot, and the chives add lovely texture and (more) colour. The soup really needs the sour cream and the chives to make it perfect. Otherwise it's just a big bowl of colour.
Although I'd like to call this borscht, it really isn't. And I definitely would not tell any Russian that I made borscht. But you can call it that if you want.
It sure does make it sound fancy.
Beetroot soup with sour cream and chives serves four
7 small/medium organic beetroot
1 litre vegetable stock
1 medium potato
1 medium onion
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup sour cream
salt and pepper
chives and extra sour cream to garnish
Peel and chop the beetroot and the potato. Be careful of your hands/clothes/bench, as they will definitely get stained by beetroot (Don't worry, it washes out. Eventually).
Chop the onion and fry it in a big saucepan until soft. Add the garlic and cook a little bit longer.
Add the potato and beetroot and cover with the stock.
Bring to the boil and cook until everything is soft, about 20-30 minutes.
Let the soup cool slightly.
Blend the soup in batches before returning to the saucepan on the stove. It's important to blend in batches, otherwise the soup can be a bit grainy. If this happens, add some water to help smooth it out.
Stir through the sour cream.
Reheat the soup gently, until hot.
Serve in (white) bowls, topped with extra sour cream and snipped chives.
p.s. I've just downloaded this new program to help edit my photos. I used to just take the photos and upload them, but now I can play around with them and brighten all the pretty colours. So if some of the photos look overly bright in the future, that's why...
