Towpath café, Regents Canal, London

  Along Regents Canal between the Whitmore Road bridge and Kingsland Road bridge in Hackney is Towpath, a café that is open from April to September. I think the months that it opens and closes vary upon the weather but it’s a “warm” season café as it is outdoors. It consists of a few small spaces carved out of the building facing the canal with tables outside and in a little niche making perfect spots for people and swan viewing. I saw a guy pass standing on a surf board using an oar to smoothly glide along the water. I have no idea what this sport is called! Canal surfing? Flat water surfing? On busy weekends a pontoon is stationed on the canal providing more tables and chairs. It serves coffee, cakes, toasted sandwiches and seasonal dishes. It was set up by Lori de Mori, an American Italian food writer. So far I have only had coffees, brownies and millionaire’s shortbread which all get a thumbs up. It is an ideal stop on a canal walk along to Broadway Market or Columbia Road.

Be aware though that at weekends it is harry packers, I went for a run along the canal on Sunday and thought I would end up in it wriggling my way through the heaving pack of coffee drinkers.

  

Cake Spread: Chocolate Cake with Blackberries and Mini Honey Cakes with Raspberries

My two friends who have been travelling for a year have returned! They’re the friends of the Indonesian Bumbu Pecel recipe that I blogged. It was great to see them again and very much cause to celebrate so I decided to make a slightly theatrical cake spread for their welcome home party with a bit of Jack the Dripper icing (think of Jackson Pollock, not the east London killer!)  connecting all the cakes together. I printed photos from various parts of their trip and glued them to cocktail sticks to make flags to plant in the cakes. I used some fabulous cake moulds for these which make cakes with holes in the centre that you can fill with the blackberries and raspberries.

Chocolate Cake

What you need:

200g unsalted butter

150g white sugar

100g dark chocolate, melted

5 eggs

50g cocoa powder

300g self-raising flour

1 punnet of blackberries

Icing sugar and red food colouring

What you need to do:

1. Heat the oven to 180C.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together, add the melted chocolate and combine well.

3. Beat the eggs in one at a time.

4. Sift the flour and cocoa powder together and add it bit by bit stirring it in well.

5. Spoon the cake mix into the mould and bake for 40-45 minutes. Check it is done by inserting a skewer or a knife – it should come out clean.

6. Make the icing by mixing a few drops of red food colouring with icing sugar until you get a drippy consistency but not too runny.

7. Once cooled, fill the hole in the centre of the cake with blackberries and drip icing all over it.

Honey Cakes

What you need:

100g butter

60g white sugar

2 eggs

4 dessert spoons clear runny honey

150g self-raising flour

1 punnet of raspberries

What you need to do:

1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

2. Beat the eggs in, one at a time.

3. Add the honey and combine well.

4. Blend the flour in.

5. Spoon into mini moulds and bake in the oven at 180C for 25-30 minutes. A skewer will come out clean when they are ready.

6. Fill the centres with raspberries and drip icing all over the cakes. These looked good with coconut shavings sprinkled on top as well.

Enjoy!

Aren’t blackberries so photogenic? Look, they even look good when they’re out of focus! This could be inspiration for a fabric or even stained glass.

Iced Espresso and Coconut Drink

          

The other day I was looking at Green Kitchen Stories and saw a recipe for a coffee coconut banana shake. It sounded delicious and inspired me to make a similar drink using what I already had in the kitchen so I made a tea peanut plantain drink. Only joking, but of course you already knew that from the title of this post! The Green Kitchen Stories recipe calls for hazelnut butter for a nutty hint, mmm, but I had tahini. It sounds odd but actually the tahini was a nice addition. I did have bananas but opted to omit them. The drink does has an unusual taste but I think it’s a good break from regular coffee.

What you need (serves 3-4):

1 tin of coconut milk

3 shots of espresso

1 tsp tahini

1 dessert spoon vanilla essence

6 ice cubes

What you need to do:

1. Make the espresso, then allow it to cool.

2. Pour the coconut milk into a jug, add the tahini, vanilla essence and ice cubes and stir. Make sure you stir the tahini in well.

3. Pour this mix into glasses and then pour the espresso on top making a marbled pattern.

Enjoy!

The Versatile Blogger Award! Toot toot!

Hello! I’m very pleased to say that Fiona from Big Hungry Gnomes nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! A while ago I saw that lots of bloggers had awards on their blogs and I thought: how did they get that? I want one!!! So, thank you, Fiona! Have a look at Fiona’s wonderful array of recipes. I particularly like the Sugar Craft ones.

The Versatile Blogger Award is awarded by other bloggers and there are a couple of obligations when you receive a nomination. The first is to nominate 15 other blogs and the second is to write 7 facts about yourself! I see!

It’s a really good opportunity to let people know about blogs they may not have come across.

My nominations are:

Mondomulia

Kiss My Spatula

Sun and Glory

Sugar and Cloth

Mistress Frida and the great undertaking of modern life

The Vagabond Baker

The Burlesque Baker

Posh Little Designs

Mimo Khair’s blog

Fit Chicks and Fast Women

Truelala

Sweet Ipomoea

Yummy Supper

Guilaine and Kevin

In Cito Photography

Now for seven random facts about me:

1. I spent 3 years of my childhood in Hong Kong and remember eating roast pigeon and banana split a lot.

2. I played “Jesus Christ” in the nativity play at the hospital where I was born a few days after I was born. A female red haired Jesus! Radical!

3. My first food memory is of pulling artichoke leaves off the globe to dip in olive oil and devour the flesh when I was about 4. Now all I think about is cake! What happened to my sophisticated palette?

4. I hope to do food styling professionally.

5. I used to have a weekend market stall at Greenwich market where I sold bags I made from coffee bean sacks and accessories from hand-made felt. You can see my post on felt-making here.

6. I love Swing dancing and recently did a Burlesque course and show which was so much fun and, contrary to popular belief, Burlesque does not always involve a strip tease.

7. I had to do army at school and learnt how to use a rifle (I thought I’d throw that in because it always gets a gasp).

Coffee Biscuits

I bought some coffee recently from the Algerian Coffee Stores (Old Compton Street, W1D) – Velluto Nero (Black Velvet) which is described as smooth and silky and I see from their website is one of their top sellers. I was tempted to try their cardamom infused blend but they add it separately so I thought I could do it myself. That reminds me, I had a seriously scrumptious Aztec inspired hot chocolate from Paul A. Young recently which had ground cardamom in it. There is a selection of spices to choose from to be added to the drink. I’m glad cardamom is doing the rounds, it was excellent in the hot chocolate. When I got home and made a cafetiere of the smooth and silky black velvet it tasted…burnt! What? It even smelled burnt! Oh dear. So I drank a few sips of it which put me off coffee for a few days and decided to make biscuits with it instead. I know your food is as good as its ingredients but in this case the biscuits did not taste of burnt coffee. Funnily enough I tried the coffee again and it has mellowed. It no longer tastes burnt!

This amount makes about 25 biscuits.

What you need:

100g butter

50g brown sugar

50ml very strong coffee from freshly ground beans

120g plain flour

For the icing: icing sugar and more strong coffee

What you need to do:

1. Heat the oven to 180C (fan).

2. Make a very strong coffee either by making an espresso or a cafetiere with lots of ground coffee and not much water.

3. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl with a fork.

4. Let the coffee cool, then add it to the bowl and combine it with the butterry sugar mixture.

5. Add the flour bit by bit blending it in. When you have added all the flour use your hands to combine all the ingredients really well.

6. Sprinkle flour on a wooden board, and on a rolling pin, and break the ball of dough into two. Roll one out to about half a centimetre thickness and cut it into triangles or whatever shape you like and put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Repeat with the other ball.

7. Bake the biscuits in the oven for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

8. Make the icing by adding strong coffee to a bowl of icing sugar drop by drop and mixing it to a smooth consistency. Dribble it on the cooled biscuits.

Salted Almond and Chocolate Soup

A friend gave me The Flavour Thesaurus (Niki Segnit, Bloomsbury) for my birthday last year which is a book based on a flavour wheel that pairs flavours, just how a colour wheel sets colours next to each other that go well together. It puts flavours together in often unusual combinations such as chocolate and bacon. I was only on page 13 when there was a recipe that perked my taste buds up:  Chocolate Soup with Salted Almonds by Christopher Tan. Chocolate, tick, as a soup, mmmm! Salted almonds, tick, tick. So here it is. I found the fantastic fabric in the photos at The Cloth House on Berwick Street, W1F. I used very rich chocolate (85% cocoa) and I think I reached a chocolate high after the soup, it felt like the chocolate was pumping through my veins. Any chocolate around 65% cocoa would be a good and less intense idea!

I suggest this amount to serve 4 people.

What you need:

25g butter

45g flaked almonds

250ml water

100ml single cream

25g caster sugar

40g cocoa powder

100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces

What you need to do:

1. Melt the butter in a pan and lightly fry the flaked almonds until they turn brown. Watch them as one moment they can still be pale and the next, dark brown turning burnt black.

2. In another pan whisk together the water, cream, cocoa powder and sugar.

3. Cook on a medium heat whilst stirring until the sugar has melted. Then let it bubble for a minute or two.

4. Add the pieces of chocolate and stir them in so they melt.

5. Serve with the almonds and flakes of salt sprinkled on top.

Macaron Monster in Paris

   

I went to Paris for a long weekend and my first desire was to find as many macarons as possible and eat them all. I telepathically emitted a warning to all macarons: “Macarons of Paris, I am coming to eat you, all of you. I will start with the salted caramel, move on to the rose, then perhaps pistachio. I will work my way through the colours of the rainbow and end with dark chocolate. If you want to live, hide now!”. I’m not sure they received my message but I didn’t succeed in finding as many as possible anyway. I failed! I got roped into going to the Louvre (again!) which, of course, is so enormous and you get swept up in a treadmill style experience sandwiched between others shuffling you along who just want to see the “Mona Lisa” (we overheard some tired sour faced girls asking each other “Where the f*** is the Mona Lisa?”) which is then like a squishy concert experience; cameras flashing, elbows jabbing ribs, me groaning. Ooof, after that I went to meet friends at Chez Prune along Quai Valmy for a cafe creme which meant that I missed the opening hours of the most of the shops. Macarons! I want you!

 

So I only had Sunday left for macaron hunting which meant that the choice was limited since most shops are closed on Sundays as all the French go to church, I presume. I asked French friends which macarons they felt were the best and they said Ladurée and Pierre Hermé, which are both also in London. Ah ha. But the shops in Paris have a wider range especially of the pastries and chocolates. Ladurée has teamed up with Hello Kitty and has incorporated her cutie pie face into their packaging. The Ladurée shops in Paris are even more Rococo kitsch than the ones in London which I wasn’t sure was possible. I went to the Pierre Hermé shop on Rue Bonaparte which has a beautiful window display of suspended ribboned donut shapes suggesting it could be a jewellery shop. Inside the chocolates and desserts are so delicate and ornate that they are as visually enticing as jewellery and even more satisfying because you can eat them. One of my macarons even had a pearlised surface. I enjoyed the Plénitude (chocolate and caramel); peach, apricot and saffron; Mogador (milk chocolate and passion fruit); Americano Pamplemousse (orange, campari and grapefruit confit) and some macarons are only available at certain times of the year, dictated by seasonal flavours, so I have to wait until June to try the Médélice (a curious combination of lemon and praline).

So, I didn’t find any macarons better than the ones that are in London (which is good news actually!) and on my way back on the Eurostar there was a little macaron in my trio of desserts. Macaron Monster was very happy indeed!

p.s. You can read about two fantastic exhibitions I saw in Paris on my art and design blog: Tim Burton and Louis Vuitton/ Marc Jacobs

(Happy) Easter Egg Chocolate Biscuits

Happy Easter! These little egg shaped biscuits look like mini Easter eggs but taste like rich dark chocolatey shortbread. The addition of cream to the ingredients makes them extra light and crumbly. They would be perfect for a homemade Easter present in a nest of streamers in a bag tied with string. Add ground almonds to the icing to give a hint of Simnel cake.

What you need:

100g butter

50g brown sugar

30g cocoa powder

2 dessert spoons cream

100g plain flour

100g icing sugar

Food colouring: pink and green

20g ground almond

Pretty loose floral tea

What you need to do:

1. Heat the oven to 180C (fan) and line a baking tray with baking paper.

2. Put the butter, sugar and cocoa powder in a bowl and cream together with a fork.

3. Add the cream and combine, then add the flour and combine well.

4. Take bits of the mixture and roll into balls the size of a large marble. Then roll again to make them slightly oblong, now squish them between the palms of your hands and they will be the shape of an egg!

5. Bake them in the heated oven for 10 -12 minutes.

6. Whilst they’re baking you can make the icing. Simply put some icing sugar in a bowl and add a touch of water. Only drip the water in as a tiny amount will absorb a lot of icing sugar.  Mix with a spoon until the consistency is smooth but still quite stiff.

7. Divide the icing into three bowls and add pink and green food colouring to two and ground almonds to the third.

8. Once the biscuits have baked let them cool, then dribble the icing on top. Stick some pretty tea leaves on some – this looks great!

Orange Zest and Caraway Seed Crispbread with Orange Curd Dip

I enjoyed making (and eating) the wholewheat crispbread with broad bean and walnut dip from a few weeks ago so much that I thought I’d make a sweet version of the crispbread. I made some orange, ginger and caraway seed biscuits a while ago which was a great combination of flavours so decided on a sweet crispbread recipe with the same flavours and a bonus of orange curd to dip them in. The crispbread makes me think of beautiful paper which has bits of petals and twiggy fibre laced into it because they are rolled out really thinly letting you see the orange zest and caraway seeds in them.

Prep time: 15 minutes     Cook time: 15 minutes

What you need for the crispbread:

150g wholewheat flour

2 dessert spoons dark brown sugar

1 dessert spoon caraway seeds

1 dessert spoon freshly squeezed orange juice

Zest of half an orange

90ml warm water

What you need to do:

1. Put the flour in a bowl and add the sugar, caraway seeds, orange zest and juice. Stir to combine.

2. Add the warm water and bring the ingredients together with your fingers until they are combined into a nice dough. Knead for 3 minutes then shape it into a ball, wrap it in cling film or baking paper and put in the fridge for 30 minutes.

3. Heat the oven to 180C (fan).

4. Take the dough out of the fridge and divide it in two.

5. Roll the dough out on a floured surface until it is very thin and slice it  into strips.

6. Place the strips on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake in the heated oven for 10 minutes.

What you need for the orange curd:

Juice of 2 oranges

Zest of half an orange

2 eggs

2 egg yolks (you can make meringues with the whites)

50g butter, cut into small pieces

2 dessert spoons granulated sugar

What you need to do:

1. Whisk the eggs, egg yolks, orange juice and sugar in a heavy bottomed sauce pan.

2. Heat on a gentle heat stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens. It should thicken enough so that it drips slowly off the spoon. This should take about 5 minutes.

3. Once it has thickened remove it from the heat and add the butter, bit by bit, stirring it in to melt.

4. Let the curd cool, then place in a jar or bowl in the fridge until you want to serve it. Serve it sprinkled with some orange zest.

*Ray-Stitch*, Essex Road, London

A haberdashery and coffee shop. This is the kind of combination I love!

A friend told me about a great place on Essex Road the other day: Ray Stitch. I was surprised that I didn’t know about it already since I live nearby and it combines several of my favourite things: fabric, buttons, coffee and cake. Friends and I used to have crafternoons and this seems like the perfect place for one. There’s a great range of fabrics on two floors, wool (thank goodness – there aren’t many wool shops around anymore), buttons, pins and needles in beautiful nouveau vintage (new but with old fashioned styled labels!) boxes, a range of patterns including vintage Vogue ones and, of course, coffee and cake. You can sip your Climpsons (= yummy) coffee on a deck chair outside breathing in the air of the Essex Road bus route or in the peaceful garden at the back. Essex Road is now even more full of great places with unusual names: Get Stuffed, Ray Stitch, Food Lab, Flashback, Sew Fantastic, Haggle Vinyl… I should do a post just on the shop signs!